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In the morning, he sat motionless, staring at the ceiling. Looking at the blankness, total emptiness, he wondered about his life.
Useless….
Useless…
Useless…
Useless…
What had he done to deserve a paper job, God? God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Why? Why him?
It echoed through his mind. He tried to think about it further. His mind was warped and strange, like a raw sheet of bubble wrap, enveloping the stupidity of his brain… His life… The road of unkempt stones. Water ran over the wings of a broken thing, wood and rubble crept along the sides of home…
He sat in isolation, thinking to himself. Thinking…. Thinking… Thinking of that glorious world past the bed, past the home, where the great Heroes of the World ran their business in the sky…
Steam rose in the air, tiny metal cups hung along the sides of a yellow house, and a bearded man wearing pleasant rags watched him… Stared at his beady eyes, his tired shape….
Buddy’s was a wonderful place to eat a couple of pancakes, and wash it down with syrup. There was a feeling of freedom, of flying through the air, and waving goodbye to work and money…Where pink bubbly lights oozed the feeling of night and death…
He savored the pancakes. The smell of them reminded him of memories… Fading like strange sand… Reality like a strange bent thing, creeping about in his mind… He remembered fall leaves, drums beating…. The snow clumping at the sides of his home… And the screams… The yelp, like a beaten dog jumping for its life as someone shot a gun.
They were gone now, as was the house, as was the place. His family, the Christmas mornings, the breaks, the homework, the pencils, the desks, the chairs, the people. School… The summer… The great voices, and the urge to run about, relax in the shade, go outside and wonder about the strange world that swallowed people into its being and crushed the hearts of all.
While he sat, he leaned against the icy windowsill. Looking at the sunlight… The sky, the strange shapes the lights made as the heat bubbled.
The waiter tapped his shoulder and gave him a plate of pancakes covered in syrup. He smiled at her. His heart feeling particularly heavy, his mind feeling empty and alone… Dust running through the corners of his ears, and the thoughts of death and nothingness made him especially depressed. But he was alone.
He wrenched a plastic fork free from a dispenser and attempted to eat a pancake. But when he held it in his hand, a warm rush of feeling bloomed through him, and then he felt the fork grow lighter in his hand.
He turned gray, he felt sick, lightheaded, and woozy. Blood crept from his nose, and some strange force pushed him to stand up and walk around dazed… Lights flashed like great torches…. Growing further and further as men and women walked to stare at him like geese with rubbernecks, further and further growing these necks, until they were serpents, snakes… Strange things… Like a process that mixed together people and Strontium, as radiation leaked into the earth, and men became gods, and someone mopped the floor, and someone yelled at him… And soup flew through the air.
“Ha! Ha!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”, he laughed suddenly, at something strange, inexplicable, like a void of black, as a patch of his mind grew crazy and unfamiliar to the marching elephants that snacked on the brain-eels that cultishly laughed and soupishly smiled.
He stood up, holding the fork in his right hand. The dishes on his table jumped into the air, singing a stupid song. Then one split open, letting loose a sludge of soup onto a man wearing a monocle nearby.
“You mother-h. I hate - going to ki- go- God-, son of a b-”, said something muffled behind the soup, stuttering the threats toward him. Quacking like a duck, and then walking away with crow’s feet in his shoes.
Bob tried to find a word to say but rushed away instead just as a great sledgehammer smiled at the table and he heard a crack.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry”, he said, stepping a bit faster than he was supposed to.
He tripped, he fell, and he crashed to the ground, slowly, as his head bounced against the solid concrete that warped and withered black and white, like a film, like a monkey with its fur being shaped strangely.
He groaned, wept, and grimaced at the sight of the people surrounding him.
“I’m fine!...”, he cried, “I’m f… Fine! Fine!”
He could still speak and felt no pain at all, on the outside. On the inside, shame burnt through his chest. He tried to look away from the people around him and began to back away, crawling into the forest of shoes and socks.
He screamed!
A crack echoed from the iron door. He dropped the fork and felt a rush of pain enter his head and eyes until he fell into whirling darkness.
He saw that the people were not looking at him. They were looking at the hyena of many heads and faces and tongues, and he screamed, saw that they were God, with their many spoons, gifts from the heavens, and their wings, and their strange golden eyes, and the fog that was enveloping the earth, and killed his lungs until something pricked his hands…
“I’m fine!”, Bob shouted, “I’m awake, I’m fine, I’m awake! I’m fine!”
He looked around in a hospital room, dark, dripping with rain, and voices that murmured names, and telephones that quietly rung and beeped. He had lied to himself, seen the danger, seen the animals of Noah’s ark blast into his diner… Seen the information in his head bubble and inflate faster than his stupid life pop.
Bob stopped, then quietly bowed his head in silence.
The nervousness faded away. He felt numb, he was cold, and there was nobody in the hospital, except for the faint beeps of the heart-rate monitor.
Beside him, a remote control lay dully against the moonlight. He tried to turn on the television, but it was static. Something beeped, but it was only the sounds of his heart croaking out blood.
He saw a tray of food lying near his bed on a separate table. Hunger drove him to drag it off onto the bed, and he ate slowly with a fork and then felt a rush of warmth flow through him again. He felt lighter than the morning air.
Something starting with an S...
His memory was foggy. His head felt funny. He felt lighter as he held the fork. But then… It was ….
The Strontium Process… That was it...
Rays of warmth, hallucination, possible death, he remembered, and that was the Strontium Process. Sudden, random, rare.
Perhaps, he could be better than UltraMan. Better than SpoonMan, Lawnmower Man, or TrashCan Man, or Fingerman or SomethingMan, or even Man, a strange incongruous blob that ate anyone that walked near him.
A nervous laugh, part excitement, part questioning, burst deep from inside him.
His heart throbbed with the feeling that he wouldn’t live longer, while his brain pulsed with excitement and a feeling of dead-lost death.
He never fell asleep.
“Morning.”
“Yes?”, he said, with a little deadening jitter in his legs, “I’m awake”
“He awake?”, said a voice from outside.
“He is, sir”, said someone else, whom he couldn’t see.
A bearded man walked inside. Big, gruff, with thin legs and a casual smile.
“Hahahahaha! You're awake, that’s good”, the man put up a wide smile, “Address me as sir, but I’m Almost-Captain Gregory Sr.”
“Good morning sir!”, Bob returned the greeting with a nonchalant smile.
He squeezed Bob’s hands, “Hahahaha! I’m part of the Police Database.”
“Hahahaha! Yes, yessir”, he nodded.
“Don’t laugh. Here, let me finish”
“Ha-. Yes, yessir”
“Don’t interrupt-”, the bearded man sighed and then nodded, “Okay, let’s cut to the chase, get to the point, Strontium Process, entered into Database, wish you a farewell.”
“Yes, yessir. But wouldn’t you rather know about my powers? Perhaps maybe-”
“Don’t interrupt. First off, do you often splurge on your money? How is your bank?”
“Your bank account”, said the nurse that had randomly appeared.
“Yes, yes, he knows”, the man said, nodding.
“What?”
“Your bank account”, said the nurse again.
“Your money, your moolah, your millions, your bucks”
“No, I don’t… spend much… But I don’t have much… What does this have to do with-?”
“No, no, we’ve already done that! Let me and the nurse talk for God’s sake!”
“But I don’t-”
“We’ve seen your credit score, Mr. Bob”, the nurse quietly explained, shaking her head, “Have you seen how low it is?”
“No, I don’t spend on my-. But what? I was wondering if we could talk about-.”
“You’re being discharged from the hospital. Your hospital bills mean that you are currently in debt by over two thousand dollars”, said the nurse.
“No, no, no. But I have the money. And I usually spend on my debit, not on credit. Why do I have to p-? But the powers, I can punch through walls if I hold a fork. I don’t understand!”
“What do forks have to do with debt?”, asked the man
“I can use my powers through forks”, Bob held up a fork in front of them, “See, If I hold it-”
“That’s okay, that’s fine…. But we’re going to have to discharge you”
“Don’t you need my information? My powers, the fork, isn’t that-?”
“Well, we’re going to need to contact your credit card provider first.”
“Credit Card Providers? But I-”
The bearded man sighed, the nurse kept quiet, and Bob shifted awkwardly around in the bed.
“I thought we talked about this Bob...”, the bearded man sighed.
“We’ll see you out on the desk”, the nurse gave him a slip of paper, “Remember to pay this when you get home.”
Then, the bearded man walked away, drowsy, unkept, unshaved, like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep because he had been looking at his bank account for the whole night.
Randy hid from the police in his ragged clothes, breathing heavily as he rested against the cool bricks.
The police were everywhere. While he was hiding in that alleyway, minding his own business, they had come. Thousands of unit cars, chasing them into great cages against the wall, against the world, until most of them had gone away until he was the only homeless man left in the entire world.
He had seen horrible things… Horrible, horrible indescribable crimes, things that he despised, he hated, he wished that somehow he could get away from it all, away from everything, into that pocket of deep hate, into that pocket of the world where nothing... Where there was nothing… Where he could relax by himself… Relax… Forever and ever, sit back and relax… Back forever… Back to a time where there was nothing...
Nothing…Nothing….
A potshot rang across the earth, as bullets fired from thousands of machine guns, and someone screamed and yelled in agonizing pain and agonizing fury.
“Goddamn them…”, Randy muttered to himself, leaning extremely against the wall to blend into the shadows, “Damn them...”
Nearby, there was a nice subway. Full of hot nice food, but nobody would let him in. The police would beat him up if they ever saw him. Then rip his spine from his body, leaving him pale and shrunken, and eat his heart and riddle him with holes.
He sighed and listened for footsteps, sirens, and tires screaming out onto the street, potshots, or anything. But he was fine, for now, they were getting nets, and more policemen perhaps.
He could ask Frank to give him some shelter at his place. But he lived in Boulevard CT, in the alleyway, where it was depressing because all those shelter-less people gathered in groups, flocks, just moving around in a circle on the street until someone called the cops, until the cameras glared forth, and then a siren rang and a whistle screamed like a dying lamb. And then, he’d never get any sleep. And then, he’d run and run and run back and forth trapped underneath those great guns, nearly dead, half alive.
Hmmm…
No, no.
Maybe Kriya, but the police had also raided their area. Nowhere left to run for him...
The whine of the siren echoed and blasted through the air. He jumped a little and landed on the ground dazed.
Wait... what the hell was it?... He heard the raid siren again. Heavy boots crunching against the soft pavement. They were coming!
“Goddamn it!”
No, not him, not him, not him, not them, not her, not anyone. Who was it? Who? Who?!.
There was a siren, approaching soon… Quick… Quick...
George’s place, but that was in a rich neighborhood, where they had tents and families, and that would seem too strange…
As he thought to himself in the miserable rain, a downpour of mist rained upon his ragged cap, and he shrieked as the water hit his skin.
“George, F-”, the shriek of a siren hit his ears and he ran out of the alley, hating the police, wishing that, one way or another, they would all die to someone like Tankman, maybe Ultraman. The stupid government, their police forces, their stupid shields, and guns.
Bob exited the hospital at 9:00 AM and paid half of the fee with most of the remaining money that he had stashed for his retirement.
But, he smiled. The clean air, he sighed in, letting the burdens of money drop from his shoulders. Finally, after all these years, with no hope, nothing to want. Finally, finally, finally. That wishful air filling his soul, his empty stomach groveling before some mighty king… Finally! Finally! Finally!
Forkman, a new pseudonym, a new name for him to fight with. To crush the skulls of dead, broken men with. To drive away all of the stupid idiotic people with. To kill all the deadness in society…
Bob rested his feet upon the park bench, rested his head on the metal bars, and napped in the soft sun. No more worries about money. The hospital was gone. They were all gone. The years of studying business and economy. The years of worrying about money and income.
All gone. All gone. All gone. He was to survive and walk as a new person. Forkman. Forkman. Forkman…That great strengthening, booze-drinking, man-eating Forkman….
Sleeping…. Napping… In a great fiery abyss… Where all was stupidity…. And he remembered nothing, and he saw nothing…
He woke up to a family of four staring at him and a sun eclipsed by a cloud.
He stood up, tired, woozy, drunk in peace, and calm. He sighed and walked home. He felt a bit funny, a bit empty, a bit guilty, but very content. Happy with his place in the world. His freedom.
Bob visited the art exhibition at night, staring at the interesting paintings. He stared at a great painting, “The remembrance of strange things”, containing a fantastically cosmic eye that ‘continuously stared into the soul and formed unease in the heart'. He stared at it again, peering into the soul of the strange eye, looking at the same painting again and again. He remembered something in that soulless eye, that strange amalgamation, that strange stupidity… The singular eye, wide and red, was the catalyst for everything. The swollen beauty of veins that twirled around a white bulb.
He could hear that endless whine of lasers skimming the infinite papers. Sales reports, bar graphs, all scrawled in illegible lettering until his eyes grew red and dim, so he could grope blindly for the next sheet, write and write strangely, scrawl across the infinite caverns, across the stupidity of himself… Where he could envision himself… Envision the world… See the stupidity rushing across everything…
He had once a great canvas hidden in the basement of his home. In it, there was a single drop of paint, a single stroke of color, and a figure. Hidden deep behind it was a chaotic rush of color and lines going across the bare canvas in a beautiful image of Everything.
Years and years, but where had it gone? He hadn’t painted on that canvas. It had been rotting away forever in a warehouse somewhere.
But, he didn’t need to worry about painting. The stupid wiggling brushes, the rough canvas that stretched out colors without a meaning…The soft blue that erupted through the world… He would become the three-pronged man, Forkman… The fantastic greatness that spoke from all.
The quiet valley was filled with deer that nibbled on the wild grass. Around him, trees grew from the earthen walls of the forest, and vines curled around the strong stumps. It was an oasis of rotting beauty, and there was nobody. Nobody at all.
Bob sat on the grass, on a homemade bench, in his homemade shed, where he had been living for the past few years. A few logs stacked themselves together in a zigzag pattern until it formed a crumbling pyre. There was a lightbulb at the top, flickering and buzzing, and a cloud of bugs that were fried alive at the touch of the glass.
He held three forks. One shoddily carved from wood, one made of metal, and one drawn on a piece of paper. The metal one was cold, rusty, overused, bent in many places. The wooden one had splintered, frayed at the handle, was freshly carved, and could be easily broken. The piece of paper had a burnt mark, a streak, that stretched down it quickly until it dimmed.
He held the metal spoon, and he could feel it enveloping him. He could feel the weight of gravity fade away, a burden fading from his shoulders. And then, he stepped forward, felt the grass bend beneath his worn soles. He crouched down, picked up a pebble, and gently tapped it against his palm. It split open, revealing a mixture of quartz smashed against lime chalk.
He checked the radio for something in the news. CNN, NPR, Local News Channels, Police Radios. There was quiet all over, static sometimes, and a mixture of calm, soothing voices, talking about politics, fast cars, and more.
No bank robberies, no crime, nothing in the city. It was a quiet place, for quiet people, and quiet things happened. Crickets buzzed and chirped, cicadas reverberated throughout the neighborhood as heat rippled in the forgotten place… Where the water ran and fell across the wet ground, and all was silent.
But tomorrow, he would fight crime. Tomorrow… Soon, he would retire from the years of hard work…
He sat in the shade of his strange wooden home, of his wooden world, where fire ran amok and screeched forth from the glorious sun.
When Randy arrived at George’s place, he had been running for two hours, in that rain. Cars rang their horns at him. The rain made his clothes cling to his skin. Wet and miserable, he ran as people yelled at him and children curiously reached out to touch him while their parents looked disapprovingly
At midnight, he reached George’s place, steel beams stuck into the dirt, with a steel plate for a roof.
“F-Ouch-ing children”, Randy shivered in the frost of the cold.
He heard the shudder of metal, turned around, and laughed at George’s pitiful attempt to get himself out of the metal tent.
“They raided every place, every store, every restaurant", George stared at him, rushing from his home. His words rushed along with his frantic face. “God, they took everything! My bike, my things… God… Oh god….”
George leaned against the wall, staring through Randy. Tired, disheveled, wearing his familiar bandanna, quiet as ever. As he rambled on and on, while Randy heard and listened, his head stirring with anger and madness, while he imagined the wreckage of dead police, thousands of tanks burned and destroyed, stupid, dumb, and all dead.
“God, If I could get a knife and kill any one of them. Just any! Any! I would gut them like fresh fish….They’re everywhere now. God. I could hear it miles away, that gunsmoke, fading away into the air. Then, they were their, RATATATAa, screaming out some stupid in signum, some motto, some sign, some chant. God! I hid for hours, and hours, inside that hole of warmth, near the dead bakery… Paused to look at those metal bats, those boots… The blood, leaking slowly into the storm drain… Sticking against their uniforms...”
Randy sighed. George paused to drink further from his mug.
“What to do?", Randy sat down. “So many dead.”
“All that police, all of them… Just marching like stupid protesters… Like brainless, corporate America… Like some mongrel dog….”, Randy shook his head.
George murmured and mumbled unintelligibly, as though uncomfortable with the thought of those words.
“The police again, and idiotic everything! Everyone! Why the hell! Why the hell do I have to worry about the police every day? I can’t sleep on a bench without someone looking at me. I can’t warm myself near a-. They’ll murder me! That’s what they’ll do. When they come, they take and drink and kill. Horrible murderers...”
“We’re safe here.”, George nodded, smiling a little, “They’ll never come back...”
“Do you like saying that to yourself? As you… walk along with naked in an alleyway, fearing the shots ringing out.....I don’t know why you’ve still survived. You’re an idiot, a retarded man...”
George quieted down and shuffled back into his abode. While Randy sat down, looking up into the crescent moon, nearly fully eclipsed...
“Quiet, George”, Randy sat against the muddy wall, “I’m thinking...”
“Sorry”, George whispered.
“I’m thinking...”, He screamed aloud, ”Dammit…. I’m tired of your jabbering mouth, your stupid, idiotic smile. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Shut-!”
A great pain filled his mind, like thousands of carved clay spikes stabbing through his skull. His grin turned to agony, pain like a thumping heart, stabbed by the world. His mind rambled… Rambled….
“What?!”, George backed away, “Randy? Randy?”
George continued to ramble, on and on, spouting words from all places.
Ignoring this, he saw the world. A true place, where all was writhing, fiery, strange... In his eyes, Randy saw small fires, blazing lively inside everything. When he reached out his hands, he could manipulate each of them. First, he slowly increased the flame of a broken can.
As he continued, he began to see it slowly levitate.
George shook his head as the rusty can split apart.
“I think I’ve figured it out, George...”, Randy jumped up, “I’ve figured it out!”
He wandered underneath the shadowy bridge and waddled forward in the ice of the water. The edge of his pants was wet, thick with ice, blue, as the snow gripped on like hard mud. He held a fork in his hand. A strange three-pronged thing…
He had waited an entire night for crime, not sleeping, listening to the empty whine of the radio. The newscasts, the worldwide web, and the soft noises of the city. But, there was only the endless rush of traffic, until he was swept away into a world of silence and nature. He was gone… Into himself, wrapped and shrouded, kneaded by a fist of warmth, as the tattered coat covered his face, his hands, his whole self… Where all was dark and black, warm like a beating heart, as he breathed on his hands, rubbed the numb things, while he shivered and cupped those hands around his ears, underneath the lonely place underneath the bridge, watching his city...
God, he remembered when he was a boy. When the Strontium Process was newly discovered, when the world was whimsical and new. There were parades, it was fun, and there was no need to worry about college. No need to worry about jobs. No need to worry about time. No need to worry about the world, the place, or about all things, where he could sit silently by himself, thinking, sleeping, away, away, away…. Asleep… Asleep… Asleep...
The stream trickled into a quiet pond. The ducks bobbed silently in the gray waters. Mud bubbled and squelched. The moon’s reflection warped in the water. As the wind blew forth from the bottom of the hills and twisted away and around the bridge, as Bob shivered, he thought and thought. Holding that cold, dumb fork… By himself… All alone...
Bob skipped pebbles across the water. They bounced only thrice, before hitting a rock and flying into the air.
He wondered about nothing, thought nothing. His forehead dripped with sweat. He tried very hard to keep himself awake. In the silence, there was chaos, strange music writhing in the air.
As the blue sun came up, he slept.
“Are you sure?” George asked Randy.
“We’re going! ‘Don’t try this, don’t try this, George’. Jabbering about stupid stuff... Stop it! Go away...”
George stared helplessly as Randy muttered to himself in isolation. His hands twitched nervously, calloused and burnt with years of climbing and traveling.
“Randy? Randy!”
But Randy ignored him, concentrated upon that space in his mind, muttering “I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking...”
“Quickly… Let’s go”, Randy muttered, and he slinked near the door, went in, while George sat by himself on a bench, and watched him. The light of the gas station flickered as dead moths rustled from the deep crevasses and Randy appeared from a cloud of cigarette smoke to a quiet man, smiling happily, muttering to himself.
There were deep mumbles, mutterings, then one scream, the shot of glass against the pavement. There was something in the air, not the sprinkle of blood, nor the quiet shout of dogs in the back, or the strange gunshots that made George scream slightly. It was the great smell of money, the rich depth, the great ink that splashed forth from green banks…
George got off the bench, stepped back, into the darkness, where he watched and watched, waiting for the familiar ring of the alarm, as thousands of policemen came out with sirens, with guns, and the large rumbling of guns against the concrete, as shells bounced, ringing and ringing until blood seeped from thousands of riddled holes.
But, there was a deep silence, quietly moving across his ears.
After a while, Randy walked toward George and unfolded money from his pockets.
The radio near him buzzed and whispered, rasping about something. He rose and awoke, groggily, he wondered where he was, and then saw the wetness of the river and the deep dirt in the cracks of the bridge. He lay against the stone, heard the splash and the receding of the waters, as the waves hopped up and down, twisting around the rivers. He listened to the radio, and then heard….
“Please contact our local police department for the whereabouts of a robber. Where thousands of dollars were stolen from a local ATM. Look out for a man with brown hair, over 5 feet, about nearly fifty years old, and wearing glasses… ”
He grabbed the radio closer to his ear.
“He was last reported near Obrik’s Lane. Eyewitnesses call him a polite, but an extremely dangerous person. Violent, psychotic, and desperate, please report him to the relevant and proper authorities.”
Bob held the radio in one hand, and a fork in the other. Running around the marshes and the mud, and to the trail again. Up the rocky hill, and then running on a bridge over the highway. Underneath him, cars sped past in random blurs. Trucks rumbled and spewed hot steam into the air. An advertisement from Treeflower(C) inc hovered over them all.
When he finally stopped, he had arrived at Obrik’s Lane, a suburban place full of ignorant people, and foreign liquor stores. People biked, jogged around, and a police cruiser was neatly parked on the side of the road.
The stained concrete walls and tinted glass windows built up the silent neighborhood. A vendor selling hot dogs called out to him. He ignored it and walked around the nearly empty place. He saw the familiar faces of the working, white-haired janitor, and the neon signs of ENTER and OPEN. ATMs dripped rust onto the ground. Scratched pennies dropped from the rough road. Leaves stirred up an earthen, musky scent.
He looked around, envisioned the rusty and poor-looking man. He saw the large hands that snatched the money out of calloused hands. Saw the strange broken eyes, emotionless, gone from the world. But there were only people, the normalness of the world, with children, father, mothers, suspicious old men, men in suits, and a few more policemen who stared at him for a while, before driving off.
“Get your Hot Dogs! Wrapped in Treeflower(C) inc Napkin Paper! Fresh, fresh! Every time you buy a hot dog, you might receive a ticket to that special, special football game sponsored by Treeflower(C) inc. Get it now! Get it now! Every time you buy, I earn money, and you earn money! It’s a free deal, so get a hot dog now!”
The vendor stared specifically at him and approached him as he was walking around the block again.
“Hey!”, waving, then smiling, “Would you like a hot dog? You could get a ticket from Treeflower(C)! Or maybe two hotdogs! Perhaps, a second hotdog to go down nicely with the second one! Why don’t you buy a hotdog now? Covered in onions, mustard, and ketchup. Goes down nicely with a nice coke and sprite! Or maybe-"
“No thanks”, Bob waved his hand and continued onward. But the vendor stopped him again.
The man rolled his cart toward him, huffing and puffing, wheezing as he did.
“I’ve noticed that you walk around the block a lot. You must be interested in my hot dogs! Why don’t you try some?" The man just kept smiling as he talked.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time. I'm busy right now. “
“It won’t take much time then to buy a hot dog.”, the man nodded, and his curious expression faded, replaced with a morbid fascination… Trudging silently behind Bob, as he continued to try and wander his thoughts elsewhere… But there was no place…
“But- I”, Bob sighed, “Fine, I’ll have one. But only one…”
He pulled out his wallet and saw that it was nearly empty. Filled with nothingness, but only four flat bills that lay ruffled…
But, he would figure it out. Perhaps, maybe. After he found that robber, after that, then there was a chance. Then he could go to his wooden home, shivering in the cold… Poor but comforted… Happy with himself and the world…
“Here you go…”, he put his hands in his pockets, shivered in the wind, as the vendor made the hot dog.
He ate with little relish, although he’d been starving for hours.
They spent the money on food and water. A feast to enjoy. Chips, salsa, beer, coke, hot dogs, chili, soup. They put it on a grand picnic table and ate with real forks and real spoons. After they stuffed themselves, they collapsed on the benches.
Randy napped in a sleeping bag. George biked around the neighborhood. It continued like this for the day. They enjoyed the sun, the sky, the neighborhood, and the soft clatter of the train on the rails.
He was alone to his thoughts, in the silence of the neighborhood, the loneliness of fall leaves and summer days. He no longer had his ragged clothes, his unshaven and dirty appearance. But he was still a bit ashamed, ever since he’d lost his job. Perhaps he would never recover, driving around the strange world… The stupidity of himself weighing down the strangeness… The inconsistency… Where he hated himself…How he had dreamed and thought of something anew… Something great…. He had traveled in an broken, run-down, car… Then there was no car… Then there was no home… Nowhere to sleep….When he was out of willpower and hope, he'd sold himself for a couple of dollars.
For a whole year, he’d seen the police… Nearly gone… Wearing those black hoods, hunting people down with their bats, shooting fire forth from metal machinery… Drinking those hot cans of soup, living a normal life. He had gotten used to it, even as it’d grown worse and worse, and he was forced to wander forever.
But it wasn’t the police. It was their fault. Their stupidity, their weaknesses that had made them homeless. It was their problems, their inability to make money as the government had wanted, their low intelligence, their addiction to life, the want to hold on to a thread of wonder and excitement and wear themselves out partying to the death. Randy had refused to believe that, rambling insanity about the police.
He continued in his rambling thoughts in the silent world. The plastic bulbs tangled in trees lighting blue and red, and the traffic rumbled through as usual. The clouds faded away as the moon rose and glittered.
It had been years…
Bob sat on the bench, watching the people that walked by, and looking for the robber, while he held his fork at ready.
He kept awake by whistling. When he got tired of whistling, he snapped his fingers. When he couldn’t snap his fingers, he tapped his feet. When he couldn’t tap his feet, he fell asleep. Snoring on the cold metal, the street lamps flickering in the night.
The trees wavered, and only one person walked the streets.
With ragged clothes, riding a bike, and fresh awake from a nap, the wheels on his bike wobbled. He muttered about the police, the society… There was a strange leap in his walk, as Randy nodded and smiled… Loved the night and its corners…
From the squeak-squawk of the wheels, Bob woke up. His eyes fluttered open, and he stared at the man biking in front of him.
With his ragged brown hair, ragged clothes, tall enough to fit what he had thought of… God… God… He could see the resemblance… The strange exactness in frame and shape…
The man sped past him. He jumped off the bench, and ran forward, calling out various names, yelling out something unintelligible to the man.
But, he, with a fork in hand, overcame the bike and its owner, running faster than he’d ever tried. He barely wheezed and caught the man by the shoulder. A hand pushed him away.
“Stop! Stop! I told you to stop!”
The man murmured something to himself
The bike swiftly turned left. Muffled, furious yells echoed through the neighborhood.
“Go away! I don’t have any money on me! Or food! Just go away… What are you doing following me… I don’t have anything alright! So, go away! ”
“But you look like him!” He ran around a fire hydrant, “Come back! Come back! Stop! I want to talk!”
“I’m only biking, minding my own business. Please go away, I’m asking politely!”
“Come back! Come back!”
The bike chain clattered to the ground. He felt bolts split apart, a bike wheel launched itself onto the road.
The bike gave a sharp swerve and hit a signpost. The middle-aged man flew through the air, sharply went up, and floated there for a while before slowly going down.
“I’m thinking… I’m thinking...”, the man murmured under his breath.
He dropped to the sidewalk, lifting the bike parts onto the sidewalk invisibly.
“You think that’s funny? Almost killing me, breaking my new bike!”, he pointed toward him. His face was grim.
Bob backed away, holding his fork with one hand, and trying to stop his other hand from twitching, and his entire body from nervously shaking.
“Stop this! Stop it! Come down slowly!”
“Explain this! Look at this mess!”, the man pointed to the bike. Then walked toward him, staring at him from afar.
“Come down slowly! Please, please! I just need this. Please don’t give a fight. I’ll pay for the bike afterward. I’ll do anything. Please just come down!”, he shivered, his frail figure shrinking.
“I’m not going to the police station, dammit! I’m not dumb! They kicked me out of my place, raided my home, made everything so stupidly dangerous!”, the man strode toward him, “Revenge? What was in their stupid minds? They were all these titchy gerbils to me…”
A great shadowy object flew toward him and hit him with a truckload of force. As it collided into his chest, his skull, his entire body, he blacked out, the fork strangely loose in his hand.
Chemicals in his head mixed together in strange ways, and an explosion of purple and yellow laughed their way to his brain until he was laughing… Until he was the purple and yellow in the jigsaw of strangeness... The existence of a universe was devoid of sound and meaning… Exploding into his existence… Like a strange power… Men that handled their own selves and talked in strange language… Drinking their own meat like it was wine… From bread and water spilled the red blood of the cross... And dead things crawled with young arms…
He heard the sound of a car alarm, like an explosion of red sound, raw and loose, running across the world.
He might’ve killed him, maybe not. Randy slowly backed away from the motionless body, horrified. He looked around, lifted the lamppost away from the man, looking at the bruised face, the motionless twitching hands… Like some strange insect…
Randy expected people to run out. He saw the police holding him down, ready to kill him, murder him in cold blood.
But there was nobody. Nobody in the empty blood-filled streets…Doing whatever they were doing. He had a chance, he was alive. He could run now, or stay with the body in the snow.
“He deserved it!”, Randy whispered to himself, “He almost killed me himself! He was going to!... Oh god…”
He ran away into the night, wobbling, drunk on guilt, and deathly pale.
“I swear…”, Randy muttered to himself, looking behind him, watching the strangeness, the limpness, in that crumpled body.
“Oh god...”, the words echoed through the neighborhood. Taxi drivers watched him run. A man in his office who’d rested his head on the keyboard woke to the sound of sprinting.
“Oh god… Oh god… Oh god!...”
Bob looked up into the strange void of grey, where the strange people danced and played their little flutes…From the mountaintop of trees and when and where and place of time and things… Where was whence? When once from thence of trucks went hence… Time like a passing bulb of light, strangely twisted… So stupidly degrading… Degradation by humanity, by the dust, the wind, by nature’s snow and sun, where words were warped by minds and power… The towers… The great grey towers of fire and snow, like hanging trees, rubbed with rope and rope till flames spread. Spread and dance and dance and once went hence and whence and thence…
Bob woke from his strange dream…On the nighttime streets, wet rain fell from the steeples and roofs of thousands of apartments stacked above and above to form a falling tower.
The grinding great machines fetishizing their return, as smoke and smog formed strange shapes in his mind, and he saw the schools, the stupid government… The stupid world… The stupid society…It was all a great degrading lie… Built upon centuries of ignorance and stupidity…
He saw the pale faces, the strange spirit of the world, lying like a deadened fresh brain, oozing with a secret of the world..…
Like the fleshy discoveries of anew… Past providence falling, smugness watching the disappointed lumps of rawness… Of stupidity in the flesh and mind… Like twirls of fresh soup… God! It was a horrible mess… The raw brain… The pinkness throbbing in pulsating swirls, twirls… Drinking the horrible blood of his mind, clotting his thought, until he wobbled in the dark, despised the world… Hated the stupidity of it all… Hated the stupidity of the world….
God, he wanted to eat them… He wanted to devour their stupid thirsty necks, gobble up their stupid minds, eat their skull and flesh and mind… Drink from their belabored backs…. Tear skin from foe and foe from the skin until all was strange and combined… A man and a seagull together, with blood binding brain together… Strontium cleansing their deadened minds and souls…. The metal from forks grinding together, until stress cleansed him, gave him purpose, sent him from steed and drank his wounds, and gave him purpose. Music throbbing in his ears, he saw a car move past, grabbed the tines of his fresh fork… Drank the knowledge from the blade, sharply piercing the skin, he saw it all…. The great rush of psychopomp-ic energy… Like great rushings, words… Slurs… Until all was a slog…. A slog of human flesh and fresh blood.
He followed the man driving, watching him with a strange bloodlust.
Randy woke up in a slur of dizziness… Dreamt of a great blood-drenched stick… And nearly sickened himself by laughing… Laughing about the damn world! The damn stick, the damn blood everywhere! The world laughed at him… Police rushing through boards, through great sheets of iron shooting all dead… Everyone!
He shuffled, lay back in his sleeping bag, in the grey tent, fog rushing through the air and snow softly dripping through, like cold, inhuman tears. Near him, the parts of a broken bike lay littered across the grass, rust pouring through, enveloping the metal…
“Randy… We need more money…”, George approached him from the outside, staring at him. Watching him with strange, mournful eyes. “We’re all out of food, water… Everything… We need much… Much, much more… ”
“I can’t”, He stared at the wreckage ahead. Watched the water glitter in the sunlight… The raindrops slowly scuttle down the drain.
“What do you mean you can’t?”, George approached him further, ”Get some! We’re going to need some more! Siphon some from the ATMs, siphon some from the banks, the gas stations! Get some!”
“No… No… I can’t… I can’t…”, Randy paused in silence, thinking to himself… Then straightened himself up. “I think we should turn ourselves in.”
“But what… what about the police… What about…”
Silence. George stared at him for a while. A strange dullness… A strange looseness… Tired of life, bored of himself… Bored of his strange existence… before he walked away into the fog… Treading into the great puddles… The small forest of leaves and dead bugs… Into a strange world filled with blue people…
There was a great sky of purple blood, like rains of strange teeth, and great gnashing dead things wrapped his head in crow’s feet and a dull concrete sound rang across his mind… As he remembered hands wrapping around his head, and a fight between blood and fist, and bone splattering… Snapping…And it was all gone… That enormous bearded figure… Gone underneath the wheels, tossed into a bloody lake, full of dead, strange things…
The cattle were drinking from the lake... It was time to hunt the dreadful little things that trotted from their little homes to stomp on the mud, make a great stink forth, and crush the deadened dirt, and deafen his eyes until he was gone from his home… Until the men that made small sheets of stupid things, scritched-scratched and stitched out his arms, until there was nothing in them… Just a great metal fork, stuck into the crevasses of his back, until great holes… Great craters, full of unhealed scars filled with his godly ichor… Like a great canvas of blood and worship… Full of strange hooks that bled and pierced the holy eyes of god… And a man screamed as a fist punched through his heart… And he laughed out from a strange cave, in the forests, in the trees, where a lake built it’s home, and he mumbled and muttered strange words to himself… Strange, pretty words… So much religion… So much chagrin… So much drama and death dancing like a wraith… A ghost of some strange thing… And a blood-covered body sang crickets and flies from the deepest ribs.
He ate the holy flesh of God and man, sniffed the stink of cattle and death. Of rubber wheels and manly beers, and years of driving, all of that sickened his taste… His fresh fork… Until he poked the blood and stuck it into his back like an accessory...
-Note(Unfinished, and To Be Updated Soon!)
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