ihavebeenfloated

I’ve been writing small bits of fiction in my comments on people’s Myspace. It mostly started as joke I was playing on Juan and they weren’t serious until I wrote a shoddy little on on Greg’s Myspace and I decided that I should do it more often. I’m posing the very few I’ve written here just because I like them.

For Greg

When I woke up this morning, my room felt different. It was as if someone had been in here while I was sleeping. I got out of bed and looked around. The door was still locked. There were still semen filled socks tucked under my bed, just where I left them. Nothing had changed, nothing detectable even. I think even the dust motes were all in their original locations, but I couldn’t help but feel that something was different.

That’s when I noticed it. I don’t know how I didn’t see before, probably because it was under the sheets, pressed up against the wall, on my bed. The body. Her body.

Greg, what the fuck do I do now?

For Kristy

When I saw her standing there, I knew my life was about to change. I felt this irresistible urge to speak to her, and being a natural recluse this was an odd feeling for me, but I followed it. There was some small talk, typical bullshit that ebbs and flows with a lyrical vibe, slithering between awkward silences, punctuated with oft repeated meaningless questions merely spoken to rescue the sound from the overwhelming silence. Her eyes cast a fire upon my world and then she tended to the embers with her sharp tongue and even sharper wit. I was smitten, I admit, and six hours later when I woke from the dream my entire body trembled with the loss. Now, as I forget the taste of neck on my tongue, I weep, because I know I will never find such flavor in another.

For Mike

He asked me if I was playing a game and my head spun. What did he mean? A game? He laughed. I think it was at me. Or, wait, was it with me? No, no, I wasn’t laughing. If the expression of my face was any more grim I think the total strangers passing us by on the street would have tried to console me. Still, he laughed. I got angry. What else could I do? What option did I have? The fool was laughing, acting as if there was some grand joke that he was in on and I was out of. Or maybe I was in it? I was the joke. Sorry, I can’t take that, I can’t take his beady eyes. I hit him. Oh, how I hit him. Just once, that’s all it took. I hit him once, with a small blade in my hand. Call it cheap, all it what you will, but the boy went down. The look in his eyes was answer enough, as if he was saying, Alright chief, I get it, you’re not playing a game, and I am so far done laughing that when I hit the ground right now I’ll probably never laugh again. The people around us even got it, a few running and several others spreading into a circle around us. But there was nothing left to see besides the spatter of blood in the air when I pulled out the hunk of metal. Oh, blood, maybe this is a game. Maybe this has been a game all along. Just some sort of grand cosmic joke played on you and I. I don’t know why I never saw it that way before. Maybe that’s why he was laughing. Did he understand? That this is all just a game? Was this all… was this all my misunderstanding? What have I done? Wow, I can’t help but laugh a little over this. Yes, laughing now. The blood, yeah, alright, that is pretty funny. I get you, man, sorry about that, but I guess it’s too late to be sorry. Your eyes, hmm, they’re empty. That’s a little funny too but not quite as funny. Sorry, chief, I guess I didn’t really get it.

For Greg

It was the first day of the first year of the thirty-first century when the robots first marched into our city. The rains in the year prior had been dreadful with flash floods often clearing the streets of the homeless and leaving the gutters cluttered with bodies full of rust and often you entered your home with the smell of wet oil in your clothing and your hair full of the rainbows caused by the mixture. Those days you would find yourself coughing up oil, for the mixture of it in the water on the ground was as such that when the sun would come out and the water evaporated into mist the oil would cling to it and there was no avoiding getting it into your lungs because there were widespread shortages of masks and the few there were went to the wealthy who already lived above the cloud layer. The poor suffered while the rest didn’t even need the assistance.

When the robots finally arrived no one had enough energy in their bodies to even be surprised. They came camouflaged with the chrome of their bodies rubbed off and layers of mud caked on to what little gray skin was still visible. They carried their guns on their backs and their eyes glowed red with ferocity that no man could match. Not even the sweepers in the streets could look them in the eye and they were their own kind. They just turned their heads toward the ground as the robots moved through the city, and for that action they were spared when the fighting began.

That last one for Greg I wrote in attempt to emulate what little I could gleam about Ernest Hemingway’s writing style. I just started A Farewell to Arms after Greg told me he hated it and would have to stop being my friend if I liked it. I just read the first chapter (which is only one page long) and find his writing style very difficult for me to comprehend because his sentences feel really complicated. It might just be because I’m tired but I don’t know. Anyway, that last one is an ode to Hemingway.