My parents decide to hold duplicate funerals for the grandparents that I never had or barely knew in her few comprehending moments.
I am late.
Is it the same amphitheatre it always has been? Perhaps smaller... I miss my grandfather as I always missed him, and I only catch the end of my grandmother's as I did in life.
Driving away in three minivans ago with Kitten, the inevitable and ubiquitous flat tire haunts.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Last Week
Another room inlaid with concrete and the distant fluorescent point-lights well illuminate the naked black woman lying on a steel gridwork suspended at some indeterminate height. Above, the shadow council looks on through diffused windows to... observe.
As I take turns becoming each in a series of relationships, I am always the one frozen atop the grid, numbly trying to escape the whirling arm fixed to the platform's center.
When I am myself, Kitten is frozen there, her face stapled to the interior of a book, her grim visage staring out at my nudity on the edge of survival. I slap her, I scream at her, I cry out "What is the way out!!!" She can only laugh, as the Joker laughs, when I have nothing I can offer, nothing I can threaten, and am powerless.
In a last effort, I twist and jerk to the side. Steel bolts puncture through the gridwork, impaling me at the forearms, the elbows, the wrists. It is quite the thing to feel both severed and crushed simultaneously.
As I take turns becoming each in a series of relationships, I am always the one frozen atop the grid, numbly trying to escape the whirling arm fixed to the platform's center.
When I am myself, Kitten is frozen there, her face stapled to the interior of a book, her grim visage staring out at my nudity on the edge of survival. I slap her, I scream at her, I cry out "What is the way out!!!" She can only laugh, as the Joker laughs, when I have nothing I can offer, nothing I can threaten, and am powerless.
In a last effort, I twist and jerk to the side. Steel bolts puncture through the gridwork, impaling me at the forearms, the elbows, the wrists. It is quite the thing to feel both severed and crushed simultaneously.
Last Week
Trapped in a mall, perhaps a coffee shop, as the lights were dim. Cinematic as it was, my eyes were fixed in front of me, focused on whatever the hell you call a coffee mogul. I suppose "barista" is the word, but the man had nothing but the oldest of Western schools' aesthetic about him. All others, however, were locked in place above me. Only after I'd taken a few steps did I recognize the plunge of a body from the ceiling above my last stand into the ground, fairly detonating the floorboards in an orgy of Bruckheimeran destruction.
Vampires, I supposed. Thank god they were just out to kick my ass and not seduce my awkward adolescent daughters.
Narrowly avoiding my own death, it was my vague responsibility to continue the chase, useless as it might seem. My only chance was to reach a pharmacy and obtain that greatest sweet Dutch beer, Grolsch. Dating from before 800 AD, it had been served at the coronation of Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor and had been blessed by his holy badassness himself at the ceremony. It would make a cheap substitute for holy water.
Running down curved wide hallways resplendent in their indoor-neon whites and blues, as per any airport shopping gallery, two pursue me in quick fashion.
Only after I burst into the nightclub facsimile of the Academy's choral room and raced down the narrow spiral staircase behind the Maitre D's personal cache was I confronted by the first group that would believe me. Shakespearean Actor and Pro Sportsman B_____ led their small cadre, and after explaining the situtation and glancing over his shoulder at the glistening lips of Jolie, I raced to the outside to secure further escape.
The first house I ran to had no occupants, but a small blue convertible only wide enough to be called a dragster lay open before me. Hotwiring, foreign science that it was, would be useless with the keys already hanging from the ignition, a spare set lying even in the console. Speeding brought me to the preacher's home, the creatures still in pursuit.
He wasn't there.
Neither was God.
Vampires, I supposed. Thank god they were just out to kick my ass and not seduce my awkward adolescent daughters.
Narrowly avoiding my own death, it was my vague responsibility to continue the chase, useless as it might seem. My only chance was to reach a pharmacy and obtain that greatest sweet Dutch beer, Grolsch. Dating from before 800 AD, it had been served at the coronation of Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor and had been blessed by his holy badassness himself at the ceremony. It would make a cheap substitute for holy water.
Running down curved wide hallways resplendent in their indoor-neon whites and blues, as per any airport shopping gallery, two pursue me in quick fashion.
Only after I burst into the nightclub facsimile of the Academy's choral room and raced down the narrow spiral staircase behind the Maitre D's personal cache was I confronted by the first group that would believe me. Shakespearean Actor and Pro Sportsman B_____ led their small cadre, and after explaining the situtation and glancing over his shoulder at the glistening lips of Jolie, I raced to the outside to secure further escape.
The first house I ran to had no occupants, but a small blue convertible only wide enough to be called a dragster lay open before me. Hotwiring, foreign science that it was, would be useless with the keys already hanging from the ignition, a spare set lying even in the console. Speeding brought me to the preacher's home, the creatures still in pursuit.
He wasn't there.
Neither was God.