Back in the desperate place the mind likes to take me, where the thoughts are all discouraging and fear walks unaccosted across the oblongata, tamping the vessels until blood pressure rises, I see that I am troubled and finally say a prayer, as my breathing heads for the shallows where the shore has disappeared…
from King’s ‘The Dead Zone
what saved me, this time, was drawing the Dead Zone, the paperback, up to my face, my nose tucked in towards the spine, and closing my eyes and inhaling deeply the scent of the pulp, which transported me body and soul into a lovely forest, some forgotten place and time, from which this pulp was hewn.
the ides of march upon us, here is my wish…
may we overcome all our fear, live long and prosper
The day was real fun. I got a couple books for free. A guy down the street moved out and left half his life street side. It was as though he just took a giant dump on our sidewalk and bolted. A whole dresser painted in pastels, a tv, reams of crappy magazines, his whole mattress and box spring setup. Sometimes I wish there was a government agency created to deal with these people. The eggs go rotten after easter. They should be forced to clean up after other people who drop their load on your street. Natural consequence. Community service. Anyway, I got a red random house called Night Time Stories With Alfred Hitchcock out of it. Anything I can do to help clean up the streets, right? The first story I turned to was one written by Ray Bradbury. It was about a reckless ‘old maid’ (she was 37 years old and you can bet I felt closer to the grave reading that) who decides to walk home alone one night after the movies in a small town with her friends who plead with her to stay overnight with them cause there’s a killer on the loose. Her one friend says she thinks her subconscious wants her to die, before saying goodbye. I liked that line a lot. Our old maid just walks on home alone, after midnight, when everyone and their dog is safe behind closed doors. She makes it home safe, though she got scared and regretted her decision when she thought someone was following her. She tries to catch her breath by the window when she finally locks her door behind her, looking out to see there was nobody at all. But oh boy, the killer is insider her house, standing aways behind her. The end! Back in the day I guess you didn’t have to show everyone all the slicing and dicing and bloodspatter. Thank you Ray Bradbury. Except for that old maid comment. And thanks to the jerkoff who took a dump on our street. – K
ps
Here is a reading from my book Maze 2:15:4 if you’re interested…
We are in the thick of October and stab the pumpkins repeatedly with knives after pulling them from the trembling vine. We light candles in memoriam and place them inside the hollowed out heads. Now we can see in the darkness the grotesque faces we carve upon them and smile. We bake their insides and salt and devour. Then we smash them in the streets just to hear the sound. Or let them die another death turning black by thanksgiving, like the teeth in our head eroded by sugars. Halloween. what a blast.
This post showcases my underlying feelings about being a child in America in the twenty-first century, which is equal parts horrifying and exhilarating… http://www.katyamills.com/2015/08/the-child.html
The velveteen rabbit was hobbling up the road with one button eye just a hangin’ from a thrice restitched socket, his nerves just a hangin’ by a thread. He looked back every time he heard a sound. The two lane highway was just ahead. He was dragging a broken leg behind him, and his cotton tail was blackened by mud. He had dropped himself off the side of the bed, after hours wrenching himself out from the little girl’s grip. He had dreamed only of this moment in time, for many years now. With what stuffing he had left for brains. There were gashes and cuts where the dogs and cats had bit and clawed him. Even the wretched maid who always put on an careless face when left alone to do her dirty work, had been known to throw his entirety into the washing and drying machines. With bleach! Dear God!
Yet none of the abuse he suffered by those to whom his life was tangential, could ever compare to the heartless depth of the one who loved him! His child companion. She loved him past living, and his experience was a perpetual dissociation to the heights of the ceiling (where her thick little pudgy arms could not reach him), looking down. Watching his limp carcass get dragged around and squeezed violently. Covered by her great human weight, every time she rolled over in her sleep. Oh hell on earth!
His fur rubbed down to the quick.
He reached the highway and held out a broken thumb. Someone in a mid-twentieth century Volvo slowed down then pulled to the side to pick him up. Sweet freedom! With all his might he pulled himself together, and hopped on up and into the car.
No sooner had he got up onto the back seat leather, when a young boy, about the same age as his child companion, only maybe a little younger and more full of reckless abandon, grabbed him about the neck in terrifying fashion, and reached over him to shut the door closed. Then peered closely at him. Fingered his shivering velveteen residual. The car pulled back onto the highway, and the boy then began to show immediate disinterest, and lovingly flicked away at his single button eye.
She looked around the city night. The canopy provided by the trees made this street darker than others. Low hanging branches and leaves flecked shadow into the metallic orange light painting the sidewalks.
A sociopath stood unseen. Camouflaged against the papered concrete walls like a barred owl.
She sensed him and he sensed her sensing him.
Were she only distracted by an iphone or earbuds, he thought. But he would not be disappointed, standing there, silently watching her navigate the street in her fishnets and heels.
Only his pupils moved across the smudge of cirrhotic, ashen pale of eyes.
In the walkway between buildings, not far from there, beneath a basement apartment’s window well, out of sight, lay the crumpled formless residue of human life and spirit. Breathless and emptying itself of fluid.
The spirit of the dead hung heavily over the sociopath, like a large cotton overcoat immersed in a pool of blood of all the ones had died by his hand in the night. A parade of frozen faces preoccupied his mind, his thoughts.
She gripped her pepper spray tight. She knew the unnatural evils under city lights, might come out the woodwork and contend with her sex.
She remained unafraid, carrying herself gracefully across the pavements. Aware the heavies were awash in their own karma.
Some terror of what one has done and cannot undo. Gyre of samsara, spinning down toward the core of the earth. For infinity. Forever.
Inside the wretched windmill marked by diverse fungi, hidden deep within the neverend of forest, lived the horrid mammoth creature marked for death, in flannels torn by victims past, clawing up to beg for mercy until each heart had beat its last.
