From the Diary of James D. Fitzherald (Part 1 of 3)
[Foreword: This is a… short story of sorts, I think? Something like that, anyway, that will be three parts, posted once a month, and, ideally, interesting reading for people who aren't me. If you, dear reader, remember my old series of stories I was posting a year and more ago… well, this is mostly unrelated. But I do have intent to revisit those stories, soon-ish.]
September 1st, 1997
"Life could be worse."
I'm hungry.
It seems a silly thing to say.
The walls of the small room, off-white plaster, surrounded the loft bed and its occupant, a young-looking boy laying on his back and scribbling in a spiral-bound diary. The blankets on the bed were plaid, green and white, with a matching pillowcase for the single pillow he laid against. He held his head with one hand and wrote with the other, a bored look on his face—a clock sat on the desk in the room and measured the time in glowing digital numbers. Outside the window, through the closed, burnt sienna-coloured Venetian blinds, crickets chirped beneath the sounds of traffic and a city.
"Tomorrow, I am going to begin high school, and it scares the Hell out of me."
I'd really like a grilled cheese sandwich.
Coward, cowardly little Boy,
To be a Man, lie yourself unafraid.
The boy had dark, ruffled hair, bushy and wild, and a pale, unsunned complexion, very soft, rounded facial features and a spindly build—not more than five foot eleven inches in height, standing. The digital alarm clock radio read '1:33' in red on black, a small, bright dot indicating it was the A.M.-designated hours of the day. He wore a long, baggy, green shirt with a white stripe down the side, over brown, red and white flannel pajama bottoms that were too short, reaching to above his nubby ankles. Over the bed, on the ceiling, posters with frayed edges for bands both current and old were taped haphazardly in place, a few peeling off—a small, stainless steel lamp was clamped to a bedpost, illuminating his writing with its artificial, yellow glow. The lamp's dull electrical humming faded behind the noise of the spinning, green blades of the fan on the ceiling—air from outside came through the one window ajar, rustling the orange, floor-length curtains.
"Miles and Good Boy will be there, though. We've decided to form a band this year."
I'm thirsty, too… We're still out of soda, aren't we?
Rocks in rushing water, eversinking,
Stepping stones to becoming all alone.
His large, green eyes, from beneath half-closed lids, followed his white ball-point pen as it marked lines and joined them together into letters along the light blue lines of the diary's pages, with one leg dangling over the edge of the bed—an acoustic, six-string guitar with a cherry-stain finish was laying beneath the bottom of the boxspring, next to its unzipped, black canvas case—a black canvas shoulder-bag was stuffed full of notebooks, binders and papers, hanging off the end of the bed on the loft's four-rung ladder. He licked his large lips and flipped a page, the faint crinkling of paper drowning out his light breathing and the creaking of the bed's springs as he shifted his weight and stretched out his leg not dangling from the edge. A foghorn blared in the far distance, over the horizon, signifying the time for some unseen activity in the town's shipyard.
"Sister's fine. Still smokes. A lot."
Damn, I could seriously go for, like, some MacDougal's or Colonel's Fried Chicken.
All people, plants in the Garden,
Watered regularly, to bloom and wither,
The Gardener last in line.
In a room across the hall from the one the boy quietly wrote inside, dissonant and chaotic music vibrated the thin walls of the small house, originating from the twin speakers of an older model, silver stereo perched on a chipped, brown dresser. The walls, sky blue plaster, enclosed the small, pine desk where a teenaged-looking girl sat resting her face on the palm of one hand, an elbow leant on the rough, stained surface of the desk, while tapping the ash of a smoking cigarette into a red-glazed, ceramic tray full of similar, smoldering, grey and black ashes. Behind the wooden, splat-backed chair the girl sat in rested an unmade, twin-sized bed with rose-red sheets tossled. Lifting a thick, black eyebrow, the girl continued to stare at the wall with an expression of malcontent and worry, sucking on the butt of the cigarette and letting the smoke roll out of her nostrils. Suddenly widening her bloodshot, hazel eyes before slightly shaking her head as though waking from a daydream, she noted the time on a dusty, antique clock with fine etchings of figures on its mahogany body, the longer hand at the 'I' and the shorter halfway between 'VI' and 'VII.' She exhaled a breath and a puff of grey and white smoke followed by grey, smoky trails.
"Today was dull, like most days here in the middle of Nowhere."
Everything's closed, now, of course… Damn. Is there still leftover Chinese?
The clouds grow heavy, saddened,
By tears of the lonely, the broken toys,
Paradise Nowhere in God's domain.
"Need to take the trash out," commanded a coarse, weary-sounding voice coming from around the corner of the cramped, messy kitchen where the dark-haired boy was waiting for a slice of toast to finish toasting. The white, four-slice toaster lazily ticked away the moments, as a wooden cuckoo bird on a pole sprang out from a wall-clock in another room and sang seven times. He grunted his compliance and looked over at the full, plastic trash can against the wall, a stained paper towel hanging over the beige top. The toaster dinged and sprang the golden brown toast free at the end of the seventh cuckoo, startling the boy and causing him to jolt out of his half-awake state. The same voice as before returned: "And the dishes." A radio from outside the kitchen was emitting the voices of a pair of self-promoting morning show hosts on a rock station, interrupted by the well-timed use of goofy sound effects. Turning toward the nearly overflowing sink, where plates with bits of food stuck to them and a greasy pan awaited, the boy took a dry saucer from the drain next to it and opened a drawer for a butter-knife. "Woowee, sure is hot today, eh, Tommy?" one of the radio hosts said with a laugh, followed by a soundbyte from a popular TV show with one of its main character qupping something quite witty about heat and underground places.
"Was the last day on the job, today."
After three months, I'm really sick of fucking french fries…
The mountains grow higher, unreachable,
The House of God, high atop, vanishing,
Lost in the foggy mists, the plants weep.
A bald-headed, tall, fat, brown-skinned man wearing a visor with a colourful, architecture-based logo and managerial nametag glanced up at the yellow-faced, red-handed clock on the green tile wall of the loud, industrialised kitchen behind the greasy, yellow counter of a fast food hamburger restaurant. "Kid, you're off, get out of here," he shouted, his bass voice dry and scratchy, while heading back toward the drive-through window, holding a massive, sweating cup full of cola, facing away from the dark-haired boy, that he was addressing, standing at one of the cash registers in the front, in the middle of rapidly punching in a customer's order.
"What would you like to drink, sir?" he inquired poiltely, squinting his eyes and staring down at the colourful, happy images on the register's square buttons, waiting for the big-nosed, bearded man wearing dark, red-tinted sunglasses across from him to give his response and a payment of some form.
"Diet," the customer answered, smirking and scratching his nose at the same time. The boy nodded and gave him the order's total cost, taking the man's plastic credit card when he offered it and promptly ran it through the slot of a credit machine. "Aren't you going to I.D. me, kid?"
The boy blinked, embarassed, and grimaced in discomfort. "Er, sorry, yes, can I see an I.D., please?"
"You don't recognize me?" the man asked, chuckling and pausing for a reaction. The boy looked up from the buttons of the register at the man: he wore a simple, grey suit, no tie, with the top, black button of his black, wrinkled shirt undone. Shaking his head after searching his memory, the boy wiped his sweaty hand over his mouth, rubbed his chin and blinked rapidly several times in the harsh, flourescent lighting of the restaurant.
"…No?"
The man smirked, once more, and held a picture I.D. up for the boy to see. The credit transaction authorised finally, spitting out a receipt, and a bored-looking, black-haired, teenaged girl with braids stepped up to relieve the boy of his duty, appearing next to him on his left suddenly holding one of the restaurant's canary yellow cardboard cups full of Diet soda. The man signed the receipt and waved a hand dismissively, taking his credit card back from the extended hand of the boy. "You will."
"…All…right, sir? Have a nice day."
The smirking man in the red sunglasses picked up the drink the girl had sat on the counter in front of him and stepped to the side to wait for the rest of his order, while the boy repeated it, in shorthand, into the microphone by the register, before letting the girl take his place. In line after the bearded man, a balding, blonde man in thick glasses walked forward to the counter, his mouth downturned into a frown, prepared to give his order.
"Hung out in Miles' basement, also."
How long ago was dinner, five, six hours? Shit… I forgot to take the trash out.
Down below, the villagers pray,
The Obelisk looms, the Moon empties,
Trees, eldest of the plants, cut away,
The River is rising, but nobody's the wiser.
The dark-haired boy stood before a white, screen door still holding his finger out, having just completed depressing the house's doorbell. A finch was perched on the edge of the gutter above the porch, and nervously shifted from side-to-side, occasionally screeching, as a fat, black and white tabby cat sat on his haunches, in the front yard, and gazed longingly upward. The boy turned away from the door, glancing down at the overgrown grass of the lawn and the intermittent patches of grey dirt that broke it up, over at the older model, rusted, silver, four-door car desperately in need fo washing parked across the sidewalk, before the front door opened and a tired-looking, muscular man in a white tank-top, stained with red and yellow spots, and tattered blue jeans glowered at him through the screen. "You Guy's friend?" he asked, hardly annuciating the words or seperating them from each other much, tilting his chin up and looking down his nose at the boy after a moment of no reply. The finch took off flying and shat on the silver car's windshield—the cat appeared to be downcast momentarily, and mozied to his half-full water bowl beside the bottom step of the porch, where dead insects and dirt floated in circles.
"Ye–Yes, sir," the boy stuttered, opened the screen door, and, then, shuffled over the threshold into the house as the man stepped aside and motioned for him to enter, letting him come in before slamming shut the front door, locking and bolting it with a flick of his fatty, hairy wrist. The young bow nodded to the older man, proceeded to not avoid eye contact, and stepped over a pile of clothes in his path, toward the archway that lead out of the littered, smelly living room. Dim light filtered in through the three windows in the room, through the closed, tan Venetian blinds, each somewhat bent and broken in places, spilling onto the brown carpeted floor in a barred, golden pattern. An upset, auburn, red and white cat darted through the boy's legs, meowing and diving underneath a pile of old boxes, toppling over an empty, damp cardboard box that had been precariously balanced on top. Looking down reluctantly, the boy saw—and smelt—a pile of fresh cat feces and quickly scuttled through the archway, coughing.
"Miles?" he called into the house, making his way through a dining room that had an oak, square table surrounded by stacks of boxes, bags and clothes, no chairs, and no working light, into a kitchen with old food dropped on the yellow and orange linoleum floor and more stacks of various sizes and types of boxes. The kitchen was lit by a flicking, flourescent light fixture hanging from the cracked, white ceiling. "Miles?" A television set somewhere else in the house was blaring the noise of a sports show, a pair of sportcasters bantering with some semi-famous sports personality, while a cat kept crying, over and over. The dark-haired boy swatted at a fly buzzying by his ear and turned around in a circle, noting the crock pot half-full of used grease on the uncleaned stovetop, and the broken plate in the bottom of the otherwise empty sink—the black, splotched microwave, easily older than the boy himself, blinked yellow digits reading '12:00', indicating the time was unset. "Miles?"
"Yo."
The boy turned to the sound of the disembodied voice and saw another boy with short, closely trimmed, blonde hair, wearing a torn, desert fatigue-patterned t-shirt missing its sleeves and green, army pants, cuffed at the bottom as they were too long, with polished, black, SWAT boots that had straps on the inside and zippers on the outside—the other boy held a hand up in greeting and was walking around the corner, through the archway from where the dark-haired boy had not entered. "C'mon," the blonde boy prompted and gestured for the dark-haired boy to follow him back to where he had appeared, descending two steps and going through a door with flaking, ochre paint, into a stone-walled basement, down a flight of unstable, wooden stairs coming onto a dusty, cracked, concrete floor. In the middle of the room a threadbare, cream-coloured carpet was laid down with a gaudy, secondhand, striped couch, orange and brown, sitting on it, along with a wooden coffee table and a plastic, white end table. Junk was sprawled everywhere, on the surface of the tables and on the couch cushions, on the floor and piled on shelves against the walls—magazines, old toys, malfunctioning electronics, borken appliances, red toolboxes, exercise equipment, free weights, bundled newspapers, aluminum cans, half of a stereo, a car door, boxes and boxes. Sunlight streamed in through long, narrow rectangles for windows high up on two of the four walls, illuminating the clouds of dust circulating in the basement air like ancient, dying cyclones. The cat was still crying over the muffled, barely audible noise of the sportcasters comparing statistics on television.
The blonde boy picked up a bucket of yellow, blue and red building block-like toys from the couch and sat it on top of issues of ripped music and electronics magazines on the end table, clearing a set for his guest. The dark-haired boy kicked a yellow, toy van based on an animated show about anthropomorphic reptiles that fought crime accidently as he moved toward the couch, grimacing as he heard something snap. The blonde shrugged and scooped up a tennis ball that looked to have been chewed on and shot it against a wall, sending it angling off into a small mountain of plush toys—orange cats and tigers, fake babies and children.
"Good Boy came by, too."
I think I'm going to grow my hair out, not get it cut for awhile…
The Gardener works, unassisted,
As God abandons the Village, unbidden,
The River is teeming, can't You see it,
The Rocks are sinking, sinking, sinking.
Three boys now sat on the creaky couch with sagging springs in the dank basement, the dark-haired and blonde ones joined by a light brown-skinned, long-haired newcomer who wore a humongous, pastel, tie-dyed t-shirt and red trackpants, barefoot. They were listening intently to music from a sizeable boombox that had been set amidst the junk on the coffee table, on top of notebooks and used books, the chords of an electric guitar backed by a rumbling bassline and the fast beating of drums, a nasally-voiced singer cutting in occasionally to talk about listlessness, apathy and paradise. Together, they silently communed in reverence to the song for a number of minutes, until the blonde boy leant forward and picked up a clean, black, electric bass guitar where it had been nestled at his boots. Unplugged, it made soft, echoing sounds as he began running through simple scales, plucking the strings with one hand and fingering the notes, down then back up the fingerboard, nodding his head in time to the poppy, rock-influenced music from the radio.
The song ended and a radio D.J. spoke up, so the long-haired boy turned the volume knob to the left to drown out the inevitable, inane prattling about sponsors, concerts and product endorsement. "Summer has come to a most pleasant close," he commented, while watching the blonde boy's fingers run over the bass's strings. The sunlight in the basement was beginning to turn darker shades of orange and gold, but an overhead lamp was now humming softly and emitting artificial light for the boys. The dark-haired boy unzipped his guitar case and produced his acoustic instrument, humming a bit to himself for a minute.
"Could've been worse," the guitarist said, plucking at a string and tuning it by ear carefully. The long-haired boy, sitting in the middle of the couch to the right of him, smiled broadly and absently rubbed a silver cross that hung around his neck by a string. A filthy-looking, white cat, out of nowhere, leapt on top of a pile of boxes in the corner of the basement and curled up.
"Could've been better," the bassist retorted, still making the soft notes with his unpowered instrument. He sat to the right of the long-haired boy, who nodded his head, running his hands through his hair and sighing. The cat in the corner yawned expansively, an impressive display of the pink throat and yellow feline teeth.
"We should start a band," the instrument-less boy proposed, standing up from the couch and stretching his arms and legs out. The couch creaked loudly, startling the cat and causing her to dig into the cardboard, refridgerator-sized box with her claws, standing bolt-upright in an instant. Heavy footsteps resounded upon the floor above the basement, followed by the sound of a door openning and shutting. A television set was still blaring a sports broadcast elsewhere in the house.
"Right," the guitarist sighed. The long-haired boy frowned slightly and tilted his head in a gesture of curiosity, looking down at the two still-sitting boys. The radio station the boombox was quietly playing featured a commercial for another action movie starring a foreign bodybuilder—imperceptively beneath that, the breathing of the cat on the refridgerator box slowed, coming in long nasal inhalations and exhalations.
"We've been saying that all summer, G.B.," the bassist smirked. Shrugigng his shoulders and chuckling, the long-haired boy hopped over a toy firetruck and walked over to a long, rectangular, dark blue bag that was shoved underneath the basement steps. Unzipping it, from inside he produced an electronic keyboard and accompanying power adapter, laying it on the edge of the coffee table after sitting down, cross-legged, and fitting the plug into an power strip ran from an outlet in the nearest wall, meant for just such uses. Flipping the keyboard on, he adjusted the volume, balance and pitch settings, tested a few notes and proceeded to tap the 'C' key over and over with a medium temp to grating effect. The white cat meowed and rolled onto her other side, her ears twitching in annoyance.
"Stop that," the bassist eventually snapped, stopping his own plucking. The keyboardist grinned mischeviously and tapped the key twice more before stopping and beginning to perform a very slow rendition of Chopin's "Chopsticks."
"What would we call ourselves?" the guitarist asked, strumming a random few chords to the same tune of "Chopsticks." The song was interrupted by the incredibly close sound of a dog barking at the top of the basement stairs, shortly preceding the yowl of the cat as she exploded from her perch and tore around the room in a panic—a second later, the dog yelped and a man's gruff voice could be heard scolding, presumably, the animal. Calming down, the cat urinated against a wall and proudly strutted up the stairs. The disc jockey on the radio announced the start of a program entitled "7 'o Clock Rock."
The three boys simultaneously shrugged. "Dunno…?"
"We still don't have a name for our band, as usual."
I am so fucking hungry…
Listen, Boy, to this tale,
It tells of daring feats of bravery,
Lies constructed for moral teaching,
And the moving woe of those left alone.
We swim in fire,
Baited in by liars,
A silly thing to say,
But perfect to pray.
"Life could be worse."
I'm hungry.
It seems a silly thing to say.
The walls of the small room, off-white plaster, surrounded the loft bed and its occupant, a young-looking boy laying on his back and scribbling in a spiral-bound diary. The blankets on the bed were plaid, green and white, with a matching pillowcase for the single pillow he laid against. He held his head with one hand and wrote with the other, a bored look on his face—a clock sat on the desk in the room and measured the time in glowing digital numbers. Outside the window, through the closed, burnt sienna-coloured Venetian blinds, crickets chirped beneath the sounds of traffic and a city.
"Tomorrow, I am going to begin high school, and it scares the Hell out of me."
I'd really like a grilled cheese sandwich.
Coward, cowardly little Boy,
To be a Man, lie yourself unafraid.
The boy had dark, ruffled hair, bushy and wild, and a pale, unsunned complexion, very soft, rounded facial features and a spindly build—not more than five foot eleven inches in height, standing. The digital alarm clock radio read '1:33' in red on black, a small, bright dot indicating it was the A.M.-designated hours of the day. He wore a long, baggy, green shirt with a white stripe down the side, over brown, red and white flannel pajama bottoms that were too short, reaching to above his nubby ankles. Over the bed, on the ceiling, posters with frayed edges for bands both current and old were taped haphazardly in place, a few peeling off—a small, stainless steel lamp was clamped to a bedpost, illuminating his writing with its artificial, yellow glow. The lamp's dull electrical humming faded behind the noise of the spinning, green blades of the fan on the ceiling—air from outside came through the one window ajar, rustling the orange, floor-length curtains.
"Miles and Good Boy will be there, though. We've decided to form a band this year."
I'm thirsty, too… We're still out of soda, aren't we?
Rocks in rushing water, eversinking,
Stepping stones to becoming all alone.
His large, green eyes, from beneath half-closed lids, followed his white ball-point pen as it marked lines and joined them together into letters along the light blue lines of the diary's pages, with one leg dangling over the edge of the bed—an acoustic, six-string guitar with a cherry-stain finish was laying beneath the bottom of the boxspring, next to its unzipped, black canvas case—a black canvas shoulder-bag was stuffed full of notebooks, binders and papers, hanging off the end of the bed on the loft's four-rung ladder. He licked his large lips and flipped a page, the faint crinkling of paper drowning out his light breathing and the creaking of the bed's springs as he shifted his weight and stretched out his leg not dangling from the edge. A foghorn blared in the far distance, over the horizon, signifying the time for some unseen activity in the town's shipyard.
"Sister's fine. Still smokes. A lot."
Damn, I could seriously go for, like, some MacDougal's or Colonel's Fried Chicken.
All people, plants in the Garden,
Watered regularly, to bloom and wither,
The Gardener last in line.
In a room across the hall from the one the boy quietly wrote inside, dissonant and chaotic music vibrated the thin walls of the small house, originating from the twin speakers of an older model, silver stereo perched on a chipped, brown dresser. The walls, sky blue plaster, enclosed the small, pine desk where a teenaged-looking girl sat resting her face on the palm of one hand, an elbow leant on the rough, stained surface of the desk, while tapping the ash of a smoking cigarette into a red-glazed, ceramic tray full of similar, smoldering, grey and black ashes. Behind the wooden, splat-backed chair the girl sat in rested an unmade, twin-sized bed with rose-red sheets tossled. Lifting a thick, black eyebrow, the girl continued to stare at the wall with an expression of malcontent and worry, sucking on the butt of the cigarette and letting the smoke roll out of her nostrils. Suddenly widening her bloodshot, hazel eyes before slightly shaking her head as though waking from a daydream, she noted the time on a dusty, antique clock with fine etchings of figures on its mahogany body, the longer hand at the 'I' and the shorter halfway between 'VI' and 'VII.' She exhaled a breath and a puff of grey and white smoke followed by grey, smoky trails.
"Today was dull, like most days here in the middle of Nowhere."
Everything's closed, now, of course… Damn. Is there still leftover Chinese?
The clouds grow heavy, saddened,
By tears of the lonely, the broken toys,
Paradise Nowhere in God's domain.
"Need to take the trash out," commanded a coarse, weary-sounding voice coming from around the corner of the cramped, messy kitchen where the dark-haired boy was waiting for a slice of toast to finish toasting. The white, four-slice toaster lazily ticked away the moments, as a wooden cuckoo bird on a pole sprang out from a wall-clock in another room and sang seven times. He grunted his compliance and looked over at the full, plastic trash can against the wall, a stained paper towel hanging over the beige top. The toaster dinged and sprang the golden brown toast free at the end of the seventh cuckoo, startling the boy and causing him to jolt out of his half-awake state. The same voice as before returned: "And the dishes." A radio from outside the kitchen was emitting the voices of a pair of self-promoting morning show hosts on a rock station, interrupted by the well-timed use of goofy sound effects. Turning toward the nearly overflowing sink, where plates with bits of food stuck to them and a greasy pan awaited, the boy took a dry saucer from the drain next to it and opened a drawer for a butter-knife. "Woowee, sure is hot today, eh, Tommy?" one of the radio hosts said with a laugh, followed by a soundbyte from a popular TV show with one of its main character qupping something quite witty about heat and underground places.
"Was the last day on the job, today."
After three months, I'm really sick of fucking french fries…
The mountains grow higher, unreachable,
The House of God, high atop, vanishing,
Lost in the foggy mists, the plants weep.
A bald-headed, tall, fat, brown-skinned man wearing a visor with a colourful, architecture-based logo and managerial nametag glanced up at the yellow-faced, red-handed clock on the green tile wall of the loud, industrialised kitchen behind the greasy, yellow counter of a fast food hamburger restaurant. "Kid, you're off, get out of here," he shouted, his bass voice dry and scratchy, while heading back toward the drive-through window, holding a massive, sweating cup full of cola, facing away from the dark-haired boy, that he was addressing, standing at one of the cash registers in the front, in the middle of rapidly punching in a customer's order.
"What would you like to drink, sir?" he inquired poiltely, squinting his eyes and staring down at the colourful, happy images on the register's square buttons, waiting for the big-nosed, bearded man wearing dark, red-tinted sunglasses across from him to give his response and a payment of some form.
"Diet," the customer answered, smirking and scratching his nose at the same time. The boy nodded and gave him the order's total cost, taking the man's plastic credit card when he offered it and promptly ran it through the slot of a credit machine. "Aren't you going to I.D. me, kid?"
The boy blinked, embarassed, and grimaced in discomfort. "Er, sorry, yes, can I see an I.D., please?"
"You don't recognize me?" the man asked, chuckling and pausing for a reaction. The boy looked up from the buttons of the register at the man: he wore a simple, grey suit, no tie, with the top, black button of his black, wrinkled shirt undone. Shaking his head after searching his memory, the boy wiped his sweaty hand over his mouth, rubbed his chin and blinked rapidly several times in the harsh, flourescent lighting of the restaurant.
"…No?"
The man smirked, once more, and held a picture I.D. up for the boy to see. The credit transaction authorised finally, spitting out a receipt, and a bored-looking, black-haired, teenaged girl with braids stepped up to relieve the boy of his duty, appearing next to him on his left suddenly holding one of the restaurant's canary yellow cardboard cups full of Diet soda. The man signed the receipt and waved a hand dismissively, taking his credit card back from the extended hand of the boy. "You will."
"…All…right, sir? Have a nice day."
The smirking man in the red sunglasses picked up the drink the girl had sat on the counter in front of him and stepped to the side to wait for the rest of his order, while the boy repeated it, in shorthand, into the microphone by the register, before letting the girl take his place. In line after the bearded man, a balding, blonde man in thick glasses walked forward to the counter, his mouth downturned into a frown, prepared to give his order.
"Hung out in Miles' basement, also."
How long ago was dinner, five, six hours? Shit… I forgot to take the trash out.
Down below, the villagers pray,
The Obelisk looms, the Moon empties,
Trees, eldest of the plants, cut away,
The River is rising, but nobody's the wiser.
The dark-haired boy stood before a white, screen door still holding his finger out, having just completed depressing the house's doorbell. A finch was perched on the edge of the gutter above the porch, and nervously shifted from side-to-side, occasionally screeching, as a fat, black and white tabby cat sat on his haunches, in the front yard, and gazed longingly upward. The boy turned away from the door, glancing down at the overgrown grass of the lawn and the intermittent patches of grey dirt that broke it up, over at the older model, rusted, silver, four-door car desperately in need fo washing parked across the sidewalk, before the front door opened and a tired-looking, muscular man in a white tank-top, stained with red and yellow spots, and tattered blue jeans glowered at him through the screen. "You Guy's friend?" he asked, hardly annuciating the words or seperating them from each other much, tilting his chin up and looking down his nose at the boy after a moment of no reply. The finch took off flying and shat on the silver car's windshield—the cat appeared to be downcast momentarily, and mozied to his half-full water bowl beside the bottom step of the porch, where dead insects and dirt floated in circles.
"Ye–Yes, sir," the boy stuttered, opened the screen door, and, then, shuffled over the threshold into the house as the man stepped aside and motioned for him to enter, letting him come in before slamming shut the front door, locking and bolting it with a flick of his fatty, hairy wrist. The young bow nodded to the older man, proceeded to not avoid eye contact, and stepped over a pile of clothes in his path, toward the archway that lead out of the littered, smelly living room. Dim light filtered in through the three windows in the room, through the closed, tan Venetian blinds, each somewhat bent and broken in places, spilling onto the brown carpeted floor in a barred, golden pattern. An upset, auburn, red and white cat darted through the boy's legs, meowing and diving underneath a pile of old boxes, toppling over an empty, damp cardboard box that had been precariously balanced on top. Looking down reluctantly, the boy saw—and smelt—a pile of fresh cat feces and quickly scuttled through the archway, coughing.
"Miles?" he called into the house, making his way through a dining room that had an oak, square table surrounded by stacks of boxes, bags and clothes, no chairs, and no working light, into a kitchen with old food dropped on the yellow and orange linoleum floor and more stacks of various sizes and types of boxes. The kitchen was lit by a flicking, flourescent light fixture hanging from the cracked, white ceiling. "Miles?" A television set somewhere else in the house was blaring the noise of a sports show, a pair of sportcasters bantering with some semi-famous sports personality, while a cat kept crying, over and over. The dark-haired boy swatted at a fly buzzying by his ear and turned around in a circle, noting the crock pot half-full of used grease on the uncleaned stovetop, and the broken plate in the bottom of the otherwise empty sink—the black, splotched microwave, easily older than the boy himself, blinked yellow digits reading '12:00', indicating the time was unset. "Miles?"
"Yo."
The boy turned to the sound of the disembodied voice and saw another boy with short, closely trimmed, blonde hair, wearing a torn, desert fatigue-patterned t-shirt missing its sleeves and green, army pants, cuffed at the bottom as they were too long, with polished, black, SWAT boots that had straps on the inside and zippers on the outside—the other boy held a hand up in greeting and was walking around the corner, through the archway from where the dark-haired boy had not entered. "C'mon," the blonde boy prompted and gestured for the dark-haired boy to follow him back to where he had appeared, descending two steps and going through a door with flaking, ochre paint, into a stone-walled basement, down a flight of unstable, wooden stairs coming onto a dusty, cracked, concrete floor. In the middle of the room a threadbare, cream-coloured carpet was laid down with a gaudy, secondhand, striped couch, orange and brown, sitting on it, along with a wooden coffee table and a plastic, white end table. Junk was sprawled everywhere, on the surface of the tables and on the couch cushions, on the floor and piled on shelves against the walls—magazines, old toys, malfunctioning electronics, borken appliances, red toolboxes, exercise equipment, free weights, bundled newspapers, aluminum cans, half of a stereo, a car door, boxes and boxes. Sunlight streamed in through long, narrow rectangles for windows high up on two of the four walls, illuminating the clouds of dust circulating in the basement air like ancient, dying cyclones. The cat was still crying over the muffled, barely audible noise of the sportcasters comparing statistics on television.
The blonde boy picked up a bucket of yellow, blue and red building block-like toys from the couch and sat it on top of issues of ripped music and electronics magazines on the end table, clearing a set for his guest. The dark-haired boy kicked a yellow, toy van based on an animated show about anthropomorphic reptiles that fought crime accidently as he moved toward the couch, grimacing as he heard something snap. The blonde shrugged and scooped up a tennis ball that looked to have been chewed on and shot it against a wall, sending it angling off into a small mountain of plush toys—orange cats and tigers, fake babies and children.
"Good Boy came by, too."
I think I'm going to grow my hair out, not get it cut for awhile…
The Gardener works, unassisted,
As God abandons the Village, unbidden,
The River is teeming, can't You see it,
The Rocks are sinking, sinking, sinking.
Three boys now sat on the creaky couch with sagging springs in the dank basement, the dark-haired and blonde ones joined by a light brown-skinned, long-haired newcomer who wore a humongous, pastel, tie-dyed t-shirt and red trackpants, barefoot. They were listening intently to music from a sizeable boombox that had been set amidst the junk on the coffee table, on top of notebooks and used books, the chords of an electric guitar backed by a rumbling bassline and the fast beating of drums, a nasally-voiced singer cutting in occasionally to talk about listlessness, apathy and paradise. Together, they silently communed in reverence to the song for a number of minutes, until the blonde boy leant forward and picked up a clean, black, electric bass guitar where it had been nestled at his boots. Unplugged, it made soft, echoing sounds as he began running through simple scales, plucking the strings with one hand and fingering the notes, down then back up the fingerboard, nodding his head in time to the poppy, rock-influenced music from the radio.
The song ended and a radio D.J. spoke up, so the long-haired boy turned the volume knob to the left to drown out the inevitable, inane prattling about sponsors, concerts and product endorsement. "Summer has come to a most pleasant close," he commented, while watching the blonde boy's fingers run over the bass's strings. The sunlight in the basement was beginning to turn darker shades of orange and gold, but an overhead lamp was now humming softly and emitting artificial light for the boys. The dark-haired boy unzipped his guitar case and produced his acoustic instrument, humming a bit to himself for a minute.
"Could've been worse," the guitarist said, plucking at a string and tuning it by ear carefully. The long-haired boy, sitting in the middle of the couch to the right of him, smiled broadly and absently rubbed a silver cross that hung around his neck by a string. A filthy-looking, white cat, out of nowhere, leapt on top of a pile of boxes in the corner of the basement and curled up.
"Could've been better," the bassist retorted, still making the soft notes with his unpowered instrument. He sat to the right of the long-haired boy, who nodded his head, running his hands through his hair and sighing. The cat in the corner yawned expansively, an impressive display of the pink throat and yellow feline teeth.
"We should start a band," the instrument-less boy proposed, standing up from the couch and stretching his arms and legs out. The couch creaked loudly, startling the cat and causing her to dig into the cardboard, refridgerator-sized box with her claws, standing bolt-upright in an instant. Heavy footsteps resounded upon the floor above the basement, followed by the sound of a door openning and shutting. A television set was still blaring a sports broadcast elsewhere in the house.
"Right," the guitarist sighed. The long-haired boy frowned slightly and tilted his head in a gesture of curiosity, looking down at the two still-sitting boys. The radio station the boombox was quietly playing featured a commercial for another action movie starring a foreign bodybuilder—imperceptively beneath that, the breathing of the cat on the refridgerator box slowed, coming in long nasal inhalations and exhalations.
"We've been saying that all summer, G.B.," the bassist smirked. Shrugigng his shoulders and chuckling, the long-haired boy hopped over a toy firetruck and walked over to a long, rectangular, dark blue bag that was shoved underneath the basement steps. Unzipping it, from inside he produced an electronic keyboard and accompanying power adapter, laying it on the edge of the coffee table after sitting down, cross-legged, and fitting the plug into an power strip ran from an outlet in the nearest wall, meant for just such uses. Flipping the keyboard on, he adjusted the volume, balance and pitch settings, tested a few notes and proceeded to tap the 'C' key over and over with a medium temp to grating effect. The white cat meowed and rolled onto her other side, her ears twitching in annoyance.
"Stop that," the bassist eventually snapped, stopping his own plucking. The keyboardist grinned mischeviously and tapped the key twice more before stopping and beginning to perform a very slow rendition of Chopin's "Chopsticks."
"What would we call ourselves?" the guitarist asked, strumming a random few chords to the same tune of "Chopsticks." The song was interrupted by the incredibly close sound of a dog barking at the top of the basement stairs, shortly preceding the yowl of the cat as she exploded from her perch and tore around the room in a panic—a second later, the dog yelped and a man's gruff voice could be heard scolding, presumably, the animal. Calming down, the cat urinated against a wall and proudly strutted up the stairs. The disc jockey on the radio announced the start of a program entitled "7 'o Clock Rock."
The three boys simultaneously shrugged. "Dunno…?"
"We still don't have a name for our band, as usual."
I am so fucking hungry…
Listen, Boy, to this tale,
It tells of daring feats of bravery,
Lies constructed for moral teaching,
And the moving woe of those left alone.
We swim in fire,
Baited in by liars,
A silly thing to say,
But perfect to pray.
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
12:01 AM
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