Saturday, July 18, 2009

How do you feel today?

I found this e-mail chain while cleaning out my inbox this week. You might chuckle.

P: How do you feel today? It is only 11am, and I feel like I have been here all day!

Me: I feel like I am a basketweaver in a very small club of basketweavers who, as part of a grand sociological experiment conducted by the military, have been asked to produce ten thousand effective baskets per week while following the advice of electricians, ditch diggers, and dolphins. And the air that we breathe daily has been laced with sodium somethingorother, which causes us to forget that we are all inmates in a facility for bipedal arthropods. We are not arthropods, I know, but with the overflow....hey, what can you do except go where they send you? At least we live with other earthlings. My cats are actually in middle management, and have been placed in my house undercover. They are currently conducting side experiments on the effects of sleeplessness on basketweavers.

L1: And I thought I was losing it…

G1: I smell what you're steppin in.

P: Actually....you know what I feel like? I feel like I am on a carousel going very fast and all the images before me are just a blur – lost in the day-to-day, not being able to see how, where or when I should get off. I stay on because that is what I am supposed to do.

L2: I feel alive! That's good enough for me!

K: I just want to make everyone a nice sandwich and take a warm bath. Alone.

G2: I feel like a giant in a land of little people. There are other giants walking the area with me but the little people do not see the fact that we are indeed giants. The everyday struggle to prevent stepping on the little people is very tiring. Sometimes we giants step on the little people and then it takes a great amount of effort to scrape them off our feet and make things right again. Every day I rise early and teach and lead the little people, trying to gain some sort of normalcy in my life. The struggle is great and yet I carry on.

L2: Mmmmmm.....little people...

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Fairy tale

He rolled over to feel something warm and wet against his cheek. It felt good, inviting, and smelled....hmmmm, like sunshine. Slightly fruity. Malevolent.

Resentfully squinting through bleary eyes, he sensed rather than saw....what? Greenness? Yes. Greenness. A little sunlight played in the highlights, but what was that in the shadows? Focus. Concentrate. He wasn't used to the mental effort, and didn't like it at all. Where was the sweet easythink and cool inebriation? Clearheadedness was slowly coming to him, and it was uncomfortable and entirely too warm.

Blinking, he opened his eyes all the way. And what did he see?

Fuck.

How could this be happening again? Right next to him -- in fact, he was touching the reprehensibly vile thing -- was a bleeding lump of a giant dead fairy. He jerked violently when he realized his cheek was dripping with the creature's nectarine death-juices. UGH. A swift windglide transported him to the gardenpatch birdbath, and he submerged, furiously swimming laps to cleanse himself of whatever substances clung to his body.

Satisfied finally with his hygiene, he almost regretted the cleansing dip when he realized it had made him considerably more sober. Shit, and doubleshit. Slowly he climbed out of the water, dripping as he perched on the structure's concrete lip. His slight frame couldn't withstand much sun, even on a pleasant spring morning, but he would dry quickly, and then he'd retreat to a breezy shade.

Looking down, he couldn't remember whether he'd killed the damn creature himself, but he certainly hoped so. Its repulsive, skeletal wings were crushed, and its large otherworldly eyes, staring and startled, were milky. Its sentience was finished.

No matter how many freshly slain fairies he encountered, he repeatedly was amazed at how sweet their lifelessness smelled. Yeah. And tasted. But that was a longago incident which never really happened -- the characters in his lucid dreams told him so.

The dead thing below him right now appeared to be female and.... HOLY yankerhell, what was that noise? Jerking his tiny pixie head toward the faraway rustle, he listened intently to discern any additional movement. He heard nothing, but couldn't risk being spotted.

Soundlessly, he was gone.