GOD'S APARTMENT
- Who are you?
God.
- Can I ask you a question?
Yes.
- Which religion is correct?
I wouldn't know, I'm not religious.
- Oh
*God lights a cigarette*
- Well, what is the difference between life and death?
There is no difference.
- Then why should I not kill myself?
Because it wouldn't make a difference.
*pause*
- You smoke?
Yes.
- Why?
It gets stressful.
- Oh.
*pause*
- I never really pictured you living in an apartment.
It's all I require. I live alone.
- Don't you get lonely?
I have never met another God. I cannot crave what I haven't experienced.
- Oh. Yeah.
*pause. God puts out his cigarette.*
- Well, what do you do for fun?
I like going fishing. When I can find the time...
- Why do you put up with us?
Even I need a purpose. What else can I do?
- Nothing. No one can really do anything anymore.
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Friday, October 9, 2009
NUIT BLANCHE: A REVIEW OF THE NIGHT
(this is a work of fiction)
It’s approaching 11pm and I’m in a cab watching the little numbers slowly creeping upwards on the fare calculator. I try to recall the evening as I feel a hangover starting. The whole story started the evening before when Pascal, his sister and I saw Fever Ray at the Kool Haus. The concert had ended and I still hadn’t come back to earth. The mixture of incense and massive amounts of fog had created the atmosphere of an ancient time in another world.
"Wanna go to a party tomorrow?” Pascal asks me.
I accept. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere anyway. I heard it was going to rain for Nuit Blanche. I stayed at Pascal’s house that night. We smoked weed out of a homemade light bulb vaporizer and he gave his sister two benzos for a pill of E. Nothing interesting happened that night, so I wont go into any more detail.
The next morning we had a big breakfast of pancakes and various other things around the house. Pascal had an omelet if I remember correctly. We watched Caillou in French. Pascal was still receiving calls and text messages from Dani, his girlfriend. The party was moved from Tavi’s house to Jostein’s. I was happy about this. I had been to Jostein’s house before, and his father wasn’t a threat to me.
We left for Jostein’s house around four or five pm. When we got there Jostein, his little brother and Dani were in his room playing with some rats. The music was constantly switching from psychedelic ambiance to Finnish folk metal. Jostein was counting his tabs of acid, while Dani was contemplating how many she should take. Pascal had already informed the group that he had a sufficient amount of chronic and one pill of ecstasy just in case.
“So I’m thinking I should do two,” Said Dani, talking about the acid.
“On your first time?” Asked Pascal, in a doubtful tone.
“Yeah,”
“On your first time?” Repeated Pascal.
“Wait, if I have a low tolerance for other stuff, does it mean I’ll have a low tolerance for acid?” Asked Dani.
“Well, yeah,” Pascal said. He didn't want her to do two. He realized that there were only 6 tabs. Jostein was doing three, the last three had to be split between Dani, Pascal and Damien, who hadn’t arrived yet. I was told they saved a tab for me, but I had to leave at 11pm, and I hadn’t planned on doing any acid. If Dani had two, Pascal wouldn’t get any.
Damien arrived. I had never met him before. He was nicer than he looked. The acid was divvied up and Pascal gave me a shampoo bottle full of some clear liquid he said was vodka, because he “felt bad” that I didn’t get any acid. Shortly after Damien arrived Pascal had convinced Dani to give him the last tab. After a few swigs from the mystery bottle it became apparent that what I was drinking was far from vodka, if in fact it had been vodka at one point.
“What else is clear?” I asked, “Well, gin is, but this isn’t gin.”
“A lot of things are clear,” answered Pascal, being the mystic that he always pretended to be.
“Wait, this is Dragon’s moonshine, isn’t it?” I asked. This night brought up more questions than answers.
Pascal just laughed: “maybe.”
At least I knew what I was drinking now. I chugged about half of it, and by the next thing I knew the room more than doubled in population. There was a dubious amount of people who I didn’t even know. It looked as if they all came in at once. We moved the party from Jostein’s room to the basement, where the children could roll their joints in peace. Once I got a good view of the crowd I immediately picked out the kids that I could tell I would hate in order to stay away from them during the evening. Luckily, I could only find one. His name was Bobby (or at least, that’s what I remember his name being) and he was very tall and had a nose that didn’t look like it had any business being on his face. So I ignored him.
Dani was out earlier that day buying some paints and paintbrushes, so we decided to paint. She grabbed some paper and lay it down on the floor. Jostein started freaking out about how we were going to make a mess, but Dani convinced him that the paint was water-soluble and it didn’t matter. I could tell that the acid was starting to kick in.
Damien came and sat down next to me, proclaiming that he wanted to paint as well. We decided that we were going to make our own mini Nuit Blanche. So we painted. We used mostly yellows, blues and whites. Dani’s brilliant idea was to make green. She mixed the hues with an air of pseudo-elegance while I sat there writing the word “cunt” over and over again in paint. It was then that the person who I knew that I would hate for the rest of my life came.
Her name was Allison, though when she first started talking to me I was almost positive she said her name was Haiti. She wore a leather jacket, tights, and a pink skirt-like thing. She had some sort of “artsy” shit on her face that was supposed to be some sort of eyeliner pattern. I could tell from the get go that she would be nothing but a bitch to me and I called her out on that, and apologized for it shortly after. I then may or may not have told her that I wanted to her to die.
Damien and I had a very in depth conversation while we were painting. I forget what it was about. Every time I looked at him he’d be smiling at me. It was probably the acid. Jostein’s dad then called us up for dinner, which I had none of. I wasn’t blind yet.
I was trying to stay inconspicuous, standing in a semi-familiar kitchen, staring at a bunch of kids I’ve never met before eat a bunch of food. It wasn’t working. I was standing next to Damien who was holding hands with that Haiti bitch. He later informed me that they had never met and she was piss-drunk. Fucking parasite. Damien kept forgetting I was standing next to him, and asked me where I came from. Jostein’s dad came up to us and asked us if we wanted some food or “a punch in the face.” I took his joke a bit to seriously and went to stand behind Dani who was, at this point tripping balls. I managed to swipe some bustle sprouts off her after Pascal said that “those green things were meant to be for everybody.” She had a meatball on her for and informed me that she “fucking hated this fucking meatball and she never wanted to fucking see it ever again.” So I kept on taking it and putting it back on her plate, no matter where she tried to hide it. Pascal and I talked about how we wanted to burn the house down and kill everyone.
Did I mention the French kids? There were some French exchange students who looked completely oblivious to all of the drug use that was going on around them. I went to hang out and smoke with them on the front porch, but their novelty disappeared as soon as I realized that they knew none of the cool French bands that I knew, like “Le Le” and “Kap Bambino.” Though they did inform me that Champagne was a real place in France, and not something that I had just made up. Also I was informed that that Bobby kid I decided that I hated drank some of the Dragonshine too. Though, unlike me, he had only taken a few swigs off it and was already acting like a complete douche.
Tavi decided that she wanted to go see Nuit Blanche and I started talking to this really nice girl named Katie (not to be confused with that Haiti bitch). Out of all the people at this party, she probably wished the least harm to befall upon me. I blessed her and said “may death come swiftly to your enemies.”
We were then on the streetcar. Tickets were supplied via Pascal and everyone was having a jolly good time. Except for Pascal, who was babysitting Dani because, even though she thought that one tab wouldn’t be enough, she was on another planet. Haiti was sitting next to Damien (still holding hands) while Damien was smiling at me whenever I looked over.
We got off the streetcar somewhere close to the Much Music place and started walking. The plan was to wander around until art found us. The first thing we saw was some scary ghosts and that crazy hallucination machine. After careful inspection we concluded that the line was too long and we didn’t really need to visit the hallucination machine in the state we were in. By this time Haiti was gone and Dani and I stopped talking about different ways in which we were going to kill her.
We ditched the Frenchies along with some other girls and Bobby to hang out on some bleachers next to an intersection. We watched a movie that consisted of, from what I could tell, seeing as I wasn’t wearing my contacts: a man getting out of a pool which then turned into the Washington monument, which then turned into a burning table that burned backwards to show a table with tea and a book on it. It then showed a busy highway and a different screen that we assumed was in Japan. It might have also shown a clock or a metronome. I forget. I had been begging Damien for a smoke, and he finally re-lit his half used cigarette so I could take a much-wanted drag.
While sitting on the platform thing I started calling some friends. None of them were at Nuit Blanche and I proceeded to tell them they were losers because of that. I then told them I loved them over and over until they hung up. Some imposters showed up and I called them out on it.
We started walking because Jostein was going to pick up some MDMA or something from some kid somewhere. It was nearing eleven, so I started bugging Pascal to get me a taxi. We were waiting outside a hotdog stand when Dani said:
“Damien, you know, you’re like the perfect person,”
This caused us to laugh, seeing as Damien has blond hair and blue eyes.
“No, I mean, he’s completely pure,” she went on “Not like you,” She pointed at me, “Your hair is brown, and that’s because you’ve bred with a nigger.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“You know what I’m talking about.” She replied. “But you’re beautiful. Like an angel. You’re made out of porcelain. We can’t keep you in the cold too long, because you’ll crack and fall apart and then the tea that is inside of you will spill out everywhere.”
“Well, that’s true,” I said.
We gravitated towards some smoke in the distance, following a closed down road littered with Pillsbury Doughboy corpses. The smoke reminded me of the fog at the Fever Ray concert.
“I really want some incest,” I said. Fully aware that was confusing incest with incense. Damien and Jostein burst out laughing.
“You know, like, some good lemon incest,” I said “the pure stuff,”
We sang along to the music that was playing and started walking to what we thought was another art exhibit, but what turned out to be an ad for 5 Gum. We gave it the finger. It was almost eleven now, so Pascal called me a cab and I got in.
“Hey, I’d like to go to Kingston and St. Clair” I said to the cabby.
“We should take the highway, trust me,” He told me, “there is way to much traffic. Why do they even have this? Every weekend they shut down the city to have some sort of festival.”
“It’s good for tourism, I guess,” I suggested, not completely paying attention to him. Trying to make my creeping hangover go away.
“Bleh, there’s can’t really be that many tourists,” He said, “They all just want to come to look at the lights.”
Which is true. None of my friends nor me got any significant benefit from it. We didn’t even understand what the art was supposed to represent. I’m not sure that anyone did, unless they really tried to pay attention and learn about that. But most people don’t do that. They just want to get drunk. They don’t have time for abstract concepts. They just want to come see the lights.
(this is a work of fiction)
It’s approaching 11pm and I’m in a cab watching the little numbers slowly creeping upwards on the fare calculator. I try to recall the evening as I feel a hangover starting. The whole story started the evening before when Pascal, his sister and I saw Fever Ray at the Kool Haus. The concert had ended and I still hadn’t come back to earth. The mixture of incense and massive amounts of fog had created the atmosphere of an ancient time in another world.
"Wanna go to a party tomorrow?” Pascal asks me.
I accept. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere anyway. I heard it was going to rain for Nuit Blanche. I stayed at Pascal’s house that night. We smoked weed out of a homemade light bulb vaporizer and he gave his sister two benzos for a pill of E. Nothing interesting happened that night, so I wont go into any more detail.
The next morning we had a big breakfast of pancakes and various other things around the house. Pascal had an omelet if I remember correctly. We watched Caillou in French. Pascal was still receiving calls and text messages from Dani, his girlfriend. The party was moved from Tavi’s house to Jostein’s. I was happy about this. I had been to Jostein’s house before, and his father wasn’t a threat to me.
We left for Jostein’s house around four or five pm. When we got there Jostein, his little brother and Dani were in his room playing with some rats. The music was constantly switching from psychedelic ambiance to Finnish folk metal. Jostein was counting his tabs of acid, while Dani was contemplating how many she should take. Pascal had already informed the group that he had a sufficient amount of chronic and one pill of ecstasy just in case.
“So I’m thinking I should do two,” Said Dani, talking about the acid.
“On your first time?” Asked Pascal, in a doubtful tone.
“Yeah,”
“On your first time?” Repeated Pascal.
“Wait, if I have a low tolerance for other stuff, does it mean I’ll have a low tolerance for acid?” Asked Dani.
“Well, yeah,” Pascal said. He didn't want her to do two. He realized that there were only 6 tabs. Jostein was doing three, the last three had to be split between Dani, Pascal and Damien, who hadn’t arrived yet. I was told they saved a tab for me, but I had to leave at 11pm, and I hadn’t planned on doing any acid. If Dani had two, Pascal wouldn’t get any.
Damien arrived. I had never met him before. He was nicer than he looked. The acid was divvied up and Pascal gave me a shampoo bottle full of some clear liquid he said was vodka, because he “felt bad” that I didn’t get any acid. Shortly after Damien arrived Pascal had convinced Dani to give him the last tab. After a few swigs from the mystery bottle it became apparent that what I was drinking was far from vodka, if in fact it had been vodka at one point.
“What else is clear?” I asked, “Well, gin is, but this isn’t gin.”
“A lot of things are clear,” answered Pascal, being the mystic that he always pretended to be.
“Wait, this is Dragon’s moonshine, isn’t it?” I asked. This night brought up more questions than answers.
Pascal just laughed: “maybe.”
At least I knew what I was drinking now. I chugged about half of it, and by the next thing I knew the room more than doubled in population. There was a dubious amount of people who I didn’t even know. It looked as if they all came in at once. We moved the party from Jostein’s room to the basement, where the children could roll their joints in peace. Once I got a good view of the crowd I immediately picked out the kids that I could tell I would hate in order to stay away from them during the evening. Luckily, I could only find one. His name was Bobby (or at least, that’s what I remember his name being) and he was very tall and had a nose that didn’t look like it had any business being on his face. So I ignored him.
Dani was out earlier that day buying some paints and paintbrushes, so we decided to paint. She grabbed some paper and lay it down on the floor. Jostein started freaking out about how we were going to make a mess, but Dani convinced him that the paint was water-soluble and it didn’t matter. I could tell that the acid was starting to kick in.
Damien came and sat down next to me, proclaiming that he wanted to paint as well. We decided that we were going to make our own mini Nuit Blanche. So we painted. We used mostly yellows, blues and whites. Dani’s brilliant idea was to make green. She mixed the hues with an air of pseudo-elegance while I sat there writing the word “cunt” over and over again in paint. It was then that the person who I knew that I would hate for the rest of my life came.
Her name was Allison, though when she first started talking to me I was almost positive she said her name was Haiti. She wore a leather jacket, tights, and a pink skirt-like thing. She had some sort of “artsy” shit on her face that was supposed to be some sort of eyeliner pattern. I could tell from the get go that she would be nothing but a bitch to me and I called her out on that, and apologized for it shortly after. I then may or may not have told her that I wanted to her to die.
Damien and I had a very in depth conversation while we were painting. I forget what it was about. Every time I looked at him he’d be smiling at me. It was probably the acid. Jostein’s dad then called us up for dinner, which I had none of. I wasn’t blind yet.
I was trying to stay inconspicuous, standing in a semi-familiar kitchen, staring at a bunch of kids I’ve never met before eat a bunch of food. It wasn’t working. I was standing next to Damien who was holding hands with that Haiti bitch. He later informed me that they had never met and she was piss-drunk. Fucking parasite. Damien kept forgetting I was standing next to him, and asked me where I came from. Jostein’s dad came up to us and asked us if we wanted some food or “a punch in the face.” I took his joke a bit to seriously and went to stand behind Dani who was, at this point tripping balls. I managed to swipe some bustle sprouts off her after Pascal said that “those green things were meant to be for everybody.” She had a meatball on her for and informed me that she “fucking hated this fucking meatball and she never wanted to fucking see it ever again.” So I kept on taking it and putting it back on her plate, no matter where she tried to hide it. Pascal and I talked about how we wanted to burn the house down and kill everyone.
Did I mention the French kids? There were some French exchange students who looked completely oblivious to all of the drug use that was going on around them. I went to hang out and smoke with them on the front porch, but their novelty disappeared as soon as I realized that they knew none of the cool French bands that I knew, like “Le Le” and “Kap Bambino.” Though they did inform me that Champagne was a real place in France, and not something that I had just made up. Also I was informed that that Bobby kid I decided that I hated drank some of the Dragonshine too. Though, unlike me, he had only taken a few swigs off it and was already acting like a complete douche.
Tavi decided that she wanted to go see Nuit Blanche and I started talking to this really nice girl named Katie (not to be confused with that Haiti bitch). Out of all the people at this party, she probably wished the least harm to befall upon me. I blessed her and said “may death come swiftly to your enemies.”
We were then on the streetcar. Tickets were supplied via Pascal and everyone was having a jolly good time. Except for Pascal, who was babysitting Dani because, even though she thought that one tab wouldn’t be enough, she was on another planet. Haiti was sitting next to Damien (still holding hands) while Damien was smiling at me whenever I looked over.
We got off the streetcar somewhere close to the Much Music place and started walking. The plan was to wander around until art found us. The first thing we saw was some scary ghosts and that crazy hallucination machine. After careful inspection we concluded that the line was too long and we didn’t really need to visit the hallucination machine in the state we were in. By this time Haiti was gone and Dani and I stopped talking about different ways in which we were going to kill her.
We ditched the Frenchies along with some other girls and Bobby to hang out on some bleachers next to an intersection. We watched a movie that consisted of, from what I could tell, seeing as I wasn’t wearing my contacts: a man getting out of a pool which then turned into the Washington monument, which then turned into a burning table that burned backwards to show a table with tea and a book on it. It then showed a busy highway and a different screen that we assumed was in Japan. It might have also shown a clock or a metronome. I forget. I had been begging Damien for a smoke, and he finally re-lit his half used cigarette so I could take a much-wanted drag.
While sitting on the platform thing I started calling some friends. None of them were at Nuit Blanche and I proceeded to tell them they were losers because of that. I then told them I loved them over and over until they hung up. Some imposters showed up and I called them out on it.
We started walking because Jostein was going to pick up some MDMA or something from some kid somewhere. It was nearing eleven, so I started bugging Pascal to get me a taxi. We were waiting outside a hotdog stand when Dani said:
“Damien, you know, you’re like the perfect person,”
This caused us to laugh, seeing as Damien has blond hair and blue eyes.
“No, I mean, he’s completely pure,” she went on “Not like you,” She pointed at me, “Your hair is brown, and that’s because you’ve bred with a nigger.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“You know what I’m talking about.” She replied. “But you’re beautiful. Like an angel. You’re made out of porcelain. We can’t keep you in the cold too long, because you’ll crack and fall apart and then the tea that is inside of you will spill out everywhere.”
“Well, that’s true,” I said.
We gravitated towards some smoke in the distance, following a closed down road littered with Pillsbury Doughboy corpses. The smoke reminded me of the fog at the Fever Ray concert.
“I really want some incest,” I said. Fully aware that was confusing incest with incense. Damien and Jostein burst out laughing.
“You know, like, some good lemon incest,” I said “the pure stuff,”
We sang along to the music that was playing and started walking to what we thought was another art exhibit, but what turned out to be an ad for 5 Gum. We gave it the finger. It was almost eleven now, so Pascal called me a cab and I got in.
“Hey, I’d like to go to Kingston and St. Clair” I said to the cabby.
“We should take the highway, trust me,” He told me, “there is way to much traffic. Why do they even have this? Every weekend they shut down the city to have some sort of festival.”
“It’s good for tourism, I guess,” I suggested, not completely paying attention to him. Trying to make my creeping hangover go away.
“Bleh, there’s can’t really be that many tourists,” He said, “They all just want to come to look at the lights.”
Which is true. None of my friends nor me got any significant benefit from it. We didn’t even understand what the art was supposed to represent. I’m not sure that anyone did, unless they really tried to pay attention and learn about that. But most people don’t do that. They just want to get drunk. They don’t have time for abstract concepts. They just want to come see the lights.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
FOREVER THE FAWN
Raphael sat in the lobby of some indie record label that he didn’t even remember the name of. It was located downtown in an old brick warehouse that, at least from the outside, looked abandoned and forgotten. He didn’t want to be there. He wasn’t very fond of the bands that were signed to this label and did not want to be associated with them, but he felt that being a part of a label would help legitimize his career. A representative of the label had got a hold of his demo tape, came to a live show and gave him her business card. He gave her his number and got a call a week later asking to meet with the label. Raphael did not have a manager yet, as he had not been playing music for long, so he had come alone. He resented his decision, though he felt it necessary. It was no skin off his back. He had no other band members that might get mad at him. This gave him freedom to do what he pleased.
The lobby of the label was very kitschy. The walls were a glossy wood paneling and the couch he sat on was upholstered with red and green plaid. The industrial warehouse looked like a cozy northern cottage on the inside, with the addition of red velvet drapes on the windows. There was even a lamp made of deer horns on the side table, if one could call it a side table; it was a rather skinny log that felt it could do the job of a table just as well as the real thing. Raphael did not understand why everything had to be so tacky. Maybe it was because liking tacky things is ironic, and to be ironic these days is to be cool. This though abruptly ended when his eyes fell upon a rather large and illogically placed stuffed fawn, complete with cheap plastic eyes that might as well have been big black buttons. The fawn was placed next to the couch across from him, obscuring the path from the waiting room to the door of the main office. The object completely destroyed the flow that the room could have achieved had it been an actual northern cottage, and not a mock northern cottage in a mock industrial warehouse.
Raphael stared at the fawn. He then closed his eyes and pictured a real fawn, walking through the forest, eating grass or whatever fawns ate, hearing a noise, perking up and then darting away. He then opened his eyes and focused them on the sorry excuse of an animal imitation across from him. “If this fawn ever saw a bear,” He thought to himself, “It would just stand there staring until it was mauled to pieces.” The thought of the fawn being destroyed made him think of the process of its creation. He envisioned a knife cutting open the underbelly and gloved hands pulling out the organs, replacing them with pure-white stuffing, the same used to stuff every other animal. The fawn was now empty of realness, void of life and soul, completely dead. But if was famous. This fawn had become immortal, destined to live her eternal afterlife in this waiting room, ready to be viewed by all the bands that enter.
“This is what I came here to become.” Raphael thought, “Famous.” He thought of himself. He was just a fawn, waiting to be gutted and presented to the world. As soon as he entered a recording studio his vision would be changed. The producer would take over. The recording engineer would then change the sound according to how he was trained to. Next would be the mixer and the masterer, who would again change the sound in the way he had been instructed to. He would be gutted, stuffed, preserved and sold. He knew at that moment he did not want that. He wanted to keep his guts and his soul and he wanted to stay alive. He wanted to stay in the forest where he belonged, instead of feeling out of place in an environment he was not used to. He wanted to be able to rot, and with that rot become the soil for something new. He did not want to end up like that fawn.
Raphael got up and walked out of the warehouse. In the days following he received a few phone calls from the label, he ignored them and the messages that they left. He continued to play in bars and small clubs, politely refusing all the labels that wanted to sign him. He still didn’t have a manager and he still worked a part time job, but he also had his guts, and he was happy.
Raphael sat in the lobby of some indie record label that he didn’t even remember the name of. It was located downtown in an old brick warehouse that, at least from the outside, looked abandoned and forgotten. He didn’t want to be there. He wasn’t very fond of the bands that were signed to this label and did not want to be associated with them, but he felt that being a part of a label would help legitimize his career. A representative of the label had got a hold of his demo tape, came to a live show and gave him her business card. He gave her his number and got a call a week later asking to meet with the label. Raphael did not have a manager yet, as he had not been playing music for long, so he had come alone. He resented his decision, though he felt it necessary. It was no skin off his back. He had no other band members that might get mad at him. This gave him freedom to do what he pleased.
The lobby of the label was very kitschy. The walls were a glossy wood paneling and the couch he sat on was upholstered with red and green plaid. The industrial warehouse looked like a cozy northern cottage on the inside, with the addition of red velvet drapes on the windows. There was even a lamp made of deer horns on the side table, if one could call it a side table; it was a rather skinny log that felt it could do the job of a table just as well as the real thing. Raphael did not understand why everything had to be so tacky. Maybe it was because liking tacky things is ironic, and to be ironic these days is to be cool. This though abruptly ended when his eyes fell upon a rather large and illogically placed stuffed fawn, complete with cheap plastic eyes that might as well have been big black buttons. The fawn was placed next to the couch across from him, obscuring the path from the waiting room to the door of the main office. The object completely destroyed the flow that the room could have achieved had it been an actual northern cottage, and not a mock northern cottage in a mock industrial warehouse.
Raphael stared at the fawn. He then closed his eyes and pictured a real fawn, walking through the forest, eating grass or whatever fawns ate, hearing a noise, perking up and then darting away. He then opened his eyes and focused them on the sorry excuse of an animal imitation across from him. “If this fawn ever saw a bear,” He thought to himself, “It would just stand there staring until it was mauled to pieces.” The thought of the fawn being destroyed made him think of the process of its creation. He envisioned a knife cutting open the underbelly and gloved hands pulling out the organs, replacing them with pure-white stuffing, the same used to stuff every other animal. The fawn was now empty of realness, void of life and soul, completely dead. But if was famous. This fawn had become immortal, destined to live her eternal afterlife in this waiting room, ready to be viewed by all the bands that enter.
“This is what I came here to become.” Raphael thought, “Famous.” He thought of himself. He was just a fawn, waiting to be gutted and presented to the world. As soon as he entered a recording studio his vision would be changed. The producer would take over. The recording engineer would then change the sound according to how he was trained to. Next would be the mixer and the masterer, who would again change the sound in the way he had been instructed to. He would be gutted, stuffed, preserved and sold. He knew at that moment he did not want that. He wanted to keep his guts and his soul and he wanted to stay alive. He wanted to stay in the forest where he belonged, instead of feeling out of place in an environment he was not used to. He wanted to be able to rot, and with that rot become the soil for something new. He did not want to end up like that fawn.
Raphael got up and walked out of the warehouse. In the days following he received a few phone calls from the label, he ignored them and the messages that they left. He continued to play in bars and small clubs, politely refusing all the labels that wanted to sign him. He still didn’t have a manager and he still worked a part time job, but he also had his guts, and he was happy.
Friday, August 28, 2009
THE WOLF THAT EVERYONE THOUGHT WAS A DEMON
Once upon a time there was a wolf monster that lived deep in the forest. One Sunday this wolf monster decided to go to the closest church he could find and kill and eat everyone inside, then burn down the church with his fire breath. So he did. He found killing people and burning churches fun, so he decided to do it every Sunday.
The people who went to church, however, didn’t like this. All the churches got together and decided that this wolf was one of Satan’s workers sent to kill the unfaithful. They agreed that the only way to stop it was through prayer. So they broadcast a message to everyone they could.
The Priest said: “This wolf is one of Satan’s demons. We must all join together and pray for salvation from The Lord. This is the only way this monster can be defeated, if you don’t pray he will eat you and your family.”
This scared many people, even those who did not believe in God or go to church. The atheists and agnostics decided that they should go to church and pray to help get rid of the wolf monster.
Unfortunately the wolf monster was not a soldier of Satan, nor did he have any concept of God or a creator, he just liked to kill and eat people, and burn things with his fire breath. So no matter how many people prayed, he would keep burning churches with his fire breath and eating all the religious people. In fact, the more people who showed up to pray, the more people he would get to eat. He liked it when more people prayed, even the people who used to be atheists or agnostics.
The wolf monster kept on eating people and burning churches with his fire breath till there were no more churches and no more religious people left. By then the wolf monster was old and grew tired of his adolescent games. He went to live the rest of his life in the forest, leaving all the unbelievers alone.
THE END
The moral of the story is this: Do not voluntarily give yourself enemies if you don’t have to, because one of them might be a wolf monster who will kill you and eat you while you’re in church.
Monday, May 11, 2009
THE STILLBORN THAT LIVED
He awoke from a dream. He awoke from an epiphany. It was late at night, or early. His clock was flashing.
12:00
12:00
12:00
In his dream he was running from evil. The evil. A pure essence of evil. He had not witnessed it, but he could sense what it was. He must run if he wanted to ever be happy again. But then he fell in the darkness. He fell into the darkness. And when he got up he was confronted with a mirror. In the mirror was his reflection, but not only his. The mirror reflected everyone he ever knew, everyone he never knew, everyone in the world. And then they spoke through him:
“The closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes, and when the world is bathed in light, our shadow will be the greatest,”
And then he woke up.
Evil was all he could think about. Was what his dream told him true? Was nothing more evil? Was his species the evil that hid in plain sight? No, he concluded, of course not. He would not stand being a member of a collective malevolence. He was not a member. There was something more immoral than his race and it’s…
It is…
“It’s in there,” he spoke, pointing to the closet.
All the evil in the world, all the unspeakable wickedness was lurking in the dark recesses of his closet. He was certain. It was in there and it was…
“Hello,” a voice said that was not his own. A voice that he could not be placed to a body. The sound of the voice cut the silence in two and discarded one half. If a voice could do this to silence, to something golden, imagine what it must be able to do to regular dust.
“H-Hello?” He stuttered, “Who are you?”
“I am the stillborn that lived, and all I have known is pain. You are a foetus with wings and are useless until you escape,”
It was at this point he realized the voice was coming from the closet.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
“Death is beautiful. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, what is the road to Heaven paved with?” The Voice inquired.
He did not respond. The question had momentarily stunned him.
The Voice continued:
“The road to Heaven is paved with me, and I know this. I do not kill. I only let you die,”
“Will you let me die?” He asked.
“I will let you kill yourself,” The voice responded.
“And if I don’t want to die?”
“Then you will live, with good intentions”
“I am the road to Hell?”
“No, you just carry it. But you are in luck, you are talking to the road to Heaven,”
“You can take me to Heaven?”
“Do you know what it feels like to be ripped?”
He did not respond. But he wasn’t scared. Being in the presence of this thing gave him a feeling of innocence.
“You are a troubled case. There is a loophole in your reasoning.”
“Why am I troubled? What is the loophole?”
“You are troubled because you take comfort in being next to evil itself, just because you look good beside it. And wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?”
Then an epiphany:
“I’m asleep?”
If he was asleep that means that it was all in his head. He had created evil from himself. He was the father of sin. Wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?
***
They said it was a suicide. That he had wandered to the bathroom and proceeded to ingest a cornucopia of pretty coloured pills. When he started to feel drowsy he went back to bed and waited. He would spread the newborn wings. He slept. Wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?
He awoke from a dream. He awoke from an epiphany. It was late at night, or early. His clock was flashing.
12:00
12:00
12:00
In his dream he was running from evil. The evil. A pure essence of evil. He had not witnessed it, but he could sense what it was. He must run if he wanted to ever be happy again. But then he fell in the darkness. He fell into the darkness. And when he got up he was confronted with a mirror. In the mirror was his reflection, but not only his. The mirror reflected everyone he ever knew, everyone he never knew, everyone in the world. And then they spoke through him:
“The closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes, and when the world is bathed in light, our shadow will be the greatest,”
And then he woke up.
Evil was all he could think about. Was what his dream told him true? Was nothing more evil? Was his species the evil that hid in plain sight? No, he concluded, of course not. He would not stand being a member of a collective malevolence. He was not a member. There was something more immoral than his race and it’s…
It is…
“It’s in there,” he spoke, pointing to the closet.
All the evil in the world, all the unspeakable wickedness was lurking in the dark recesses of his closet. He was certain. It was in there and it was…
“Hello,” a voice said that was not his own. A voice that he could not be placed to a body. The sound of the voice cut the silence in two and discarded one half. If a voice could do this to silence, to something golden, imagine what it must be able to do to regular dust.
“H-Hello?” He stuttered, “Who are you?”
“I am the stillborn that lived, and all I have known is pain. You are a foetus with wings and are useless until you escape,”
It was at this point he realized the voice was coming from the closet.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
“Death is beautiful. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, what is the road to Heaven paved with?” The Voice inquired.
He did not respond. The question had momentarily stunned him.
The Voice continued:
“The road to Heaven is paved with me, and I know this. I do not kill. I only let you die,”
“Will you let me die?” He asked.
“I will let you kill yourself,” The voice responded.
“And if I don’t want to die?”
“Then you will live, with good intentions”
“I am the road to Hell?”
“No, you just carry it. But you are in luck, you are talking to the road to Heaven,”
“You can take me to Heaven?”
“Do you know what it feels like to be ripped?”
He did not respond. But he wasn’t scared. Being in the presence of this thing gave him a feeling of innocence.
“You are a troubled case. There is a loophole in your reasoning.”
“Why am I troubled? What is the loophole?”
“You are troubled because you take comfort in being next to evil itself, just because you look good beside it. And wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?”
Then an epiphany:
“I’m asleep?”
If he was asleep that means that it was all in his head. He had created evil from himself. He was the father of sin. Wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?
***
They said it was a suicide. That he had wandered to the bathroom and proceeded to ingest a cornucopia of pretty coloured pills. When he started to feel drowsy he went back to bed and waited. He would spread the newborn wings. He slept. Wouldn’t it be nice to die in your sleep?
Monday, April 20, 2009
When I was about 8 or 9 I used to play with my friends in the junkyard. Our parents told us to stay away from there, but we’d go anyway, in secret. We loved to play in the old cars. Pretend to race them. The rust reminded me of factories with high smokestacks that spewed blackened smog into the air. My brother worked in a factory.
One morning I was sitting on Michael’s front porch, eating ice cream with him. It was hot that day, really hot. Michael said he wanted to go to the junkyard, since there was nothing to do at home. So we went.
He challenged me to a race. He knows I’m slower than he is. He just does that because he wants to rub it in. But before I could protest he had started to run. I followed. When I finally caught up with him he was standing in the centre of the junkyard, looking down. I caught up to him.
-What is it?
I think it’s a raccoon or something.
-It looks dead.
It is.
-It looks really dead.
How can something look really dead? I mean, it’s already dead, how much deader can it get?
-I dunno, it’s just, its guts are everywhere.
Yeah
-Maybe…
Maybe what?
-Never mind.
No, tell me.
-Well, maybe we could…
Yeah?
-Do you think we could bring it back to life or something?
How would we do that?
-I dunno, it’s just; it doesn’t look too happy the way it is. Maybe if we collected all of the guts and stuff, we could put it back together or something.
It’s not like a broken car; you can’t take it apart and put it back together. It’s an animal, and it’s dead.
(Michael walks away, looking for something)
-What are you doing?
I’m getting a stick.
-Why?
I wanna flip it over.
(Michael gets a stick and flips it over)
It must have been here for a long time.
-How do you know?
There’s already a bunch of maggots in it.
-Oh
-What do you think killed it?
Dunno, it might have been a car or something. Or maybe one of the dogs got it.
-Yeah, I bet it was a dog.
A wolf.
-A wild wolf with big teeth and red eyes.
No, probably just a dog.
-I wanna go home.
Ok, let’s go.
When I got back home my mom was crying. There had been an accident at the factory. Children shouldn’t play with dead things.
One morning I was sitting on Michael’s front porch, eating ice cream with him. It was hot that day, really hot. Michael said he wanted to go to the junkyard, since there was nothing to do at home. So we went.
He challenged me to a race. He knows I’m slower than he is. He just does that because he wants to rub it in. But before I could protest he had started to run. I followed. When I finally caught up with him he was standing in the centre of the junkyard, looking down. I caught up to him.
-What is it?
I think it’s a raccoon or something.
-It looks dead.
It is.
-It looks really dead.
How can something look really dead? I mean, it’s already dead, how much deader can it get?
-I dunno, it’s just, its guts are everywhere.
Yeah
-Maybe…
Maybe what?
-Never mind.
No, tell me.
-Well, maybe we could…
Yeah?
-Do you think we could bring it back to life or something?
How would we do that?
-I dunno, it’s just; it doesn’t look too happy the way it is. Maybe if we collected all of the guts and stuff, we could put it back together or something.
It’s not like a broken car; you can’t take it apart and put it back together. It’s an animal, and it’s dead.
(Michael walks away, looking for something)
-What are you doing?
I’m getting a stick.
-Why?
I wanna flip it over.
(Michael gets a stick and flips it over)
It must have been here for a long time.
-How do you know?
There’s already a bunch of maggots in it.
-Oh
-What do you think killed it?
Dunno, it might have been a car or something. Or maybe one of the dogs got it.
-Yeah, I bet it was a dog.
A wolf.
-A wild wolf with big teeth and red eyes.
No, probably just a dog.
-I wanna go home.
Ok, let’s go.
When I got back home my mom was crying. There had been an accident at the factory. Children shouldn’t play with dead things.
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