11:32 PM - Riverbend Gated Community off FM 327 - Katy, Texas, U.S.A.
~
‘No, not that sort of thing at all. Imagine these lights, right? Like, on your face for long periods of time, but not to the effect of like, one-far-off-constant-glaring-dentist-light-type light like you’re talking or anything, but more so like with the consistently-shifting-colorful-flashing-images-being-projected-right-onto-your-face-type / light like I’m talking'
‘Directly into your / eyyyyye, maaaaan'
‘Directly into your- yeah, fuck it man!'
‘PPPPPFFFFFHHHH/huhuhuhuhhuhhuhhhhh'
‘This is actually / killing me.'
‘Don’t talk about the Dentist man, / please-'
‘HHHHHHHWWWWEEWWWGGGGHHHHGHGHGHGHHH'
Notwithstanding the best of his efforts to retain the meditative quality of his lung’s resistive posture, blue smoke spiraled ubiquitous as it was expelled, pushed bullish with a commanding domination over his entire trembling body, and resonated into a coughing fit that flew with rage from all the way deep down within Chase’s very right-wing-corn-fed-all-American bowels.
Pipes/cigarettes packed with ‘nicotine-free’ tobacco were passed around lackadaisically between the boys smushed arm-to-arm in the tiny upstairs bedroom’s bathroom’s toilet room of ‘Wax’s mom’s house’.
They would later discover that the term ‘nicotine-free’ was the inaccurate hearsay relation of another as being ‘addictive-free’; a misquoting caused by that hearsayer's dyslexia when having spied a colorful advertisement that cunningly described the tobacco, in a font whose letters were suspiciously IMPERIAL and thoroughly contiguous, as being ‘additive-free’.
Giggling and punching to the right of Chase, atop the bathtub’s shitty too-slim porcelain rim, affixed permanently ‘at-the-hip’, pimpled both in countenance and in kind, was the inseparable duo known to the group only as Clark and Mindy, twelve and thirteen, respectively.
The two boys met in shop class, and through a mutually subconscious recognition of one another's skill at the practical applications of simple metallurgy, a strong knack for cracking the best jokes, (though not always at the appropriate times fun, nonetheless) and just sort of having a generally-all-around-let's-have-a-good-time-all-the-time-type of life, grew as one.
Stuffed to their left, and to Chase's immediate right, was squished the rose-red-puff-cheeked runt-of-the-group Mickey Hickson, aged eleven, who is only allowed to hang with the boys because he plays a mean electric guitar, and though he’s the most socially-inept and fucking awkward kid you’ve ever laid eyes on, he seems to affect this sort of inexplicable anomaly, some invisible-radiation-cosmic-magnetism-type stuff for fuck's sake that draws flocks of the opposite sex to the runt like flies on honey.
Chase stood attentively against the inner panels of the toilet room's thin wooden door, which seemed to levitate within its not-so-bad metal hinges; a squeak-and-creak every now-and-again when he shifted his weight reminding him of its (and their situation’s) essential quality of ultra-fragility.
Most of the boys were thirteen-ish.
Some twelve-ish.
One eleven.
To the left of Chase, stood upright, leaning along a small, short shaft-of-a-wall were Jeffrey May and Wade ‘Shrimp’ Strimbo, both twelve.
A combo whose friendship, though not industrially fused by metal inert gas like that of Clark and Mindy, made them a duo of dynamism, nonetheless.
Where Clark and Mindy were, at times, indiscernible between one another due to such stark similarities in behavioral tics despite such contrasting skin tones (Mindy being the color of Earth, and Clark that of a cloud), May and Shrimp, though so alike in appearance they were often mistaken for fraternal twins or sometimes rarer, cousins, did not often share deeply held beliefs.
In arguments, one would typically fold to the other’s point of view (usually Shrimp due to his size (or lack thereof)) on the surface, but within remain stolidly unchanged.
Clark and Mindy were more likely to have a loud, long row though sometimes it seemed theatrical, as deep down it was clear they were always on the same side, unlike the enmity from far down which seemed to brew no more than some bubble of this intense-but-hidden-type of rivalry between Shrimp and May.
To their, and Chase's (sort of) left was seated ‘Wax’ upon the toilet, consistent in his inquisitiveness upon the order of not just pipes/cigarettes, but also upon which friends ranked higher among others in terms of pipe-/cigarette-handing skills based on a sort of crudely judgmental pretending-to-be-humble-but-still-with-a-holier-than-thou-attitude-that-made-his-high-and-mighty-sense-of-humility-be-percieved-ultimately-as-totally-self-righteous-and-judgmental-type of way.
It was 11:44 PM and there was just no way they were going to miss what would be the finale of not just the first, but also, unbeknownst to the boys, the very last season of Shark Seven’sBreach Tactic: an avant-garde cable broadcast examining the fictional account of a documentary camera crew known as Shark Seven as it documents the relationships between the stars of a fictional reality television program whose name is unknown; the documentary camera crew remaining the show’s real 'Stars' for the entirety of its one season.
To Wax’s immediate left and Clark’s immediate right, immediately in front of Chase, sat beneath the small ventilating window on the cold tile that warmed to the touch of filled denim was Chase's best friend and hero, Lewis Ledger.
His forearms rested coolly on bent knees, his posture seeming to melt into the crease where the wall met the floor. He seemed almost vertically supine using only the passive traction of his rubber soles to keep him from slumping forward into a horizontal heap-of-a-liquid-type form.
He was fourteen, the oldest of all of us, and wore sunglasses indoors.
The sound of the hound being let out for a piss floated up from downstairs with an immediacy that seemed to cause only Chase and Hickson to lift their attention. A general sense of unease swept through the water-closet's occupiers giving them the fantods. They were wholly bound to secrecy and the presence of an authority figure would compromise their operation ad nauseam. It was time to abort. The upstairs bedroom’s bathroom’s toilet room was gagging to exhale a few of the boys, as they began to crowd one another with feelings of wholesomeness and fulfillment ready to depart into a lateral vector adjacent the space they filled.
A thunderstorm made itself known like an apparition seeping upward between the bars of a gate laid horizontal; pure electric thunder roared, hissed, between hits and bore a televised crack and whistle.
~
0430 - Southeastern Zone 6 - London Borough of Bexley, England, U.K.
~
The air at 0430 was stiff and chilled,
like the exterior wetness
of a freezing Heineken
held-in-hand
during the season
when bears hibernate.
Only this morning was experienced
in its pre-dawn sheen
smoothed over
into a duskily blue haze;
ghoulishly bitten
by the convex rim
of what looked like
a reflective coin
of stretched water
and tattered by
cheeping,
nibbling
pigeons.
Normally, taking a shower alleviates,
a ceremony of washing clean,
but although this shower does
seem to release
some of the semi-snarling spikes
and rather
squeaky
pressures
building within skulls,
there is, ever-present,
the anxious spear
tipped with conscious guilt.
They ignore this,
and nonetheless
ride the momentum
of a wakeful washing of water
from the combed,
shaved, and ironed
white collared shirt,
black trousers, and
black shoe combo
to the truly forgiving
tingled chill
of that morning’s nippy 0514.
They like to roll cigarettes before They set out for the studio.
They don’t always,
but when They do,
remember to grab their airtight
Gold Standard 'Additive-Free' Quality Blend,
Easy-Rolling Quality Papers,
and “Nation's Favourite” Extra-Slim Filters,
They feel at the top of their game,
as They can be sure to get a few puffs in
before the bus gets there,
hopefully.
Sometimes
They smoke their cigarettes
in the back gardens beside their dewy allotments
before They leave,
but rarely.
Another few times,
though less rarely still very scarcely,
do They smoke their cigarettes
just outside their front doors
in the slim trenches of brick
between They
and their neighbors'
homes,
but Those who partake don't enjoy this practice when alone,
or when not waiting for someone in the house,
as They feel sort of begrudgingly voyeuristic
about anyone walking by
and can’t help but be made uncomfortable
by the looking-glass impressions
They give Themselves
that all passersby
totally see Them
as some like
weird
voyeuristic
organism.
So but sometimes,
but still less rare and not very often,
do some of Them walk down to the bus stop while smoking their rolled cigarettes,
though none of Them much enjoy this method
whatsoever
as the whole smoking-while-walking thing
really fucks up their whole
nicotized experience,
and They generally feel that the wind
ends up smoking more of their cigarettes
than They ever get to anyway.
So what happens usually is They’ll smoke their cigarettes at the bus stop.
Sitting on the shitty
too-slim
small
red
stump,
which seems to simply function only
as the necessitated tease of relief
that won’t let one of Them truly fall asleep
without tasting the morning-after hangover taste
of bus-stop concrete,
is an option for smoking their cigarettes
as long as it’s early enough
that no one will be lively enough
to bother one another with small-talk,
and that the bus is late enough
providing Them the time to do so,
but so often do They begin to light up
as they make their diagonals
across the painted zebra-patterned walkway
that the bus’s heave and shattered rustling of tree branches
scraped and shoved by the blood-red double decker
HHHHJJJJJJJHHHH
forces them to terminate their cigarettes
with maximum smoke received before death,
like some 14-year-old kids direly
puffing out of a small window
in utter desperation and
fear on some fresh,
newly-lit pipes
or cigarettes
in an upstairs
walk-in closet as
one of their mother’s
approaches imminently
with her stern knock at some
thin metal-hinged wooden door,
as
if
(T)hey
somehow
have the balls
to kill the entire
thing in one last-ditch
attempt before total
destruction.
They don't save their half-smoked cigarette butts because they smell to Them like, well, half-smoked cigarette butts and couldn’t equate that smell to anything better if They tried.
If one were wondering what the smell is like:
go smoke half of a cigarette,
put it out,
wait a minute,
and then smell the thing.
So but,
every now and again,
They are luckily gifted
on their cigarette-absent walks
down the road from their homes
with the fast-moving portrait
of a red blur-of-a-bus heading English
down the crossing street in front of them
communicating ample time to sit at the stop
smoking their cigarettes
in peace
and totality.
(As a side note,
sometimes if They’re waiting for a bus
and it’s taking too long,
They’ll deliberately roll cigarettes at the bus stop
to sort of
summon
the red beast,
as They know They’ll never have enough time
to smoke the entirety of the things
PLUS the time They’d all been sitting there,
though occasionally,
but not all that often,
does the bus actually take longer than even two cigarettes,
which They all view to be slightly maddening;
particularly Those who did not light up at the chance(s).)
But on this 0517,
of a slightly 'more pre-dawn' morning than usual,
there is a specter at the bus stop.
The fickle mist of that morning’s early hour made itself present through cotton-eyed gazes blinking away the gritty dust of last night’s sleep-cycles.
They swallowed the sight before Them.
An all-gray presence appearing,
in that odd way,
more the spectral resemblance of a person,
or their shadow,
rather than the living one,
decked out with suitcases and the like,
sitting on the shitty, little (in)convenient red stump of the bus stop;
its form of a woman’s.
They chose to smoke their cigarettes at the top of the road,
a choice odd and foreign to even Themselves,
giving Them just enough time to,
probably,
but briefly,
but still probably,
slightly annoy this gray stranger
as They smoked the rest of their cigarettes
while seated next to her
on the shitty red stump
before the rest of Them arrived.
(T)hey talked briefly, but none really remember what about, nor would (T)hey ever need to.
Though a remark They do remember was that the bus was slightly early to the time it was scheduled to arrive which is why the gray woman had been sitting there despite leaving 3 minutes earlier than They, Themselves.
This made Them ponder the times in which maybe it’s better for Them to be late rather than early to something.
~
0528 - 723 bus northwest-bound toward Zone 1 - London, England, U.K.
~
her thoughts swam upriver
of the direction the
mechanized beast
rocked and shook them down
stop-start
curves more violently tranquil than those of a
luscious hourglass body
she began to read her book while listening to music through headphones
and was shook
by a rude awakening
to see
that she
had missed
her stop
and so pressed
the red
STOP
button
and realized the bus was now to stop at
a small spot
without even a shelter or
small red stump
inside the
waxed
crescent
of a road
across from
a field the likes of which
gave her the chill of not knowing whatsoever where she was
and so forced the bus driver to stop at an empty stop
where no one got off
not even she
she just sat there and felt like a fool
as gazing eyes peered noisily from black-suits
the ever-wondering steam leaping from the back of her
as foreign stares questioned her entire existence
and then she got off at a stop a little further down
and read some things on some boards
and crossed a street
and found the right bus stop
and figured hey fuck it what the hell
and rolled herself a cigarette
and smoked it at this new bus stop
and then the new bus showed up
and the bus driver didnt stop at the stop
and went to the light instead
and she saw the driver make a motion with his hand signifying no
and this chance for her now seemed limited to running to the next stop down
but not very likely considering the amount of cumbersome material she was lugging
and another bus now approaching from the opposite side of the road made itself into a window of opportunity that she leapt through unafraid of broken glass consequences
for she said fuck my plans
and ran to the door
and cried silently
and the bus driver pulled a hero
and opened his doors to the gray young woman
and let her on
and a really nice old woman remarked about her luck
the driver even picked her up
for this bus was for Employees Only
and shared with her a squinty smile that made her feel warm
and squintingly smiling herself
and made her feel generally appreciative of what had transpired
and she made it her prerogative to find out
and possibly even become
an Employee of whatever destination it was
to which these folks travelled daily.
~
0712 - Soundstage 1-A of Toe-Tag Studios - Undisclosed Locale
~
The combined enthusiasm of the cast & crew on Shark Seven’s Breach Tactic series was never more than a speck in comparison to that of its creator, Emile Woods, also known by most women, (sometimes men) whose interests lie in horizontal accompaniment of the man, but most frequently known to himself, as 'Mr. Hollywood’; 'Hollywood' for short.
He is an American.
A man.
He is an American man.
Who is sometimes quite alright
except when he's not
He has a severely addictive personality
which frequently attracts chaotic
Alright, that’s enough-
fuck off
This is actually pointless
Hollywood drug himself from 'the dark place' with the cold breach of what had originally appeared a glass film being rippled over the bowl of the studio's staff's bathroom's sink. His face was shocked with ALIVE! and in an instant, his heart skipped a beat triggering ‘PLAY’ firing a synaptic reel into the ‘ON’ position.
He witnessed the 'reality stars' which the Stars of his show were focused upon.
They were holding cameras
and filming his Team
film Shark Seven
in a triangular feedback loop.
He pulled his face upward seizing the space above, exploding tentacles of water with the outward acceleration of a golden ratio casting the eerily translucent drip of dragged claw-marks melting downward upon what was before a spotless mirror; their manner one that indicates their color should be sanguine (the liquid claw-pattern's). Hollywood’s mind reeled with images of abandoning the Reality show’s third of the set and putting them in an environment similar to his and Shark Seven’s team's. He peered through refracted dendrites racing downward toward his own obstructed visage. He envisioned surrounding the three simultaneous casts/crews in a pressing infinity. His luxury three-piece was soaked. His tie askew, he slammed the studio bathroom door shut
harder than upon his flight bursting out.
Ignoring the immediacy of the immediate eyes immediately peering before his deranged figure,
He
galloped
down
the stairs
about
two or three
sometimes four
steps
at-a-time
WHAM!!!
Another door slammed open which awkwardly slammed back toward him
which he had to stop with his forearm
and all he could think was that the draft probably ruined his hair,
unaware
of his already soaked,
misshapen appearance.
A silence had fallen through the air
that,
in the heat of the moment,
Hollywood could not discern
whether was present before
or after his entrance,
but regardless it was now time to BASK in the GLORY for he was a GENIUS come here to impart upon his fellow cohorts the secret knowledge of what would save their hideous child from its grotesque death. His mouth ran as a fine-toothed motor, rumbling and BBBBVVVRVRRRRRing in radial shapes around his Team.
They smoked cigarettes in the studio.
He LOVED that, though he didn’t smoke himself.
They saw him as a tool.
He explained his idea.
'To HELL with fake reality stars rehashing old paraphrased dialogue around a 'paramilitary task force' who search endlessly, chasing false parables like chickens with their heads cut off! Let's give 'em cameras and they’ll film,
not Shark Seven's team,
but US
filming Shark Seven
filming them!'
‘Running around like chickens with our heads cut off.'
'WAMMO! What a time to be alive.'
A few crew members from Hollywood's Team abandon their equipment and their cigarettes alike, spitting on them or stepping on them to extinguish, and simply walk away without a word. There are no hard feelings between anyone.
Those who do stay do so with a silent vigilance that communicates a ‘let’s get on with it then’ attitude, which Hollywood adores.
~
12:10 AM - Riverbend Gated Community off FM 327 - Katy, Texas, U.S.A.
~
‘HHHHJJJEWWWWHEWHEWHEWHEWHHHH'
Clark's teeth vibrated within his mouth as his tongue formed a shallow valley releasing a laugh that stuttered from his throat like a lawnmower that wouldn’t start up.
He suffered from the inconvenient habit of not being able to tell when it was appropriate to laugh.
The boys slumped in tired anxiety surrounding the liquid-crystal display that was to entrance them during that night's entertainment.
They were adequately prepared for SSTB's season finale, replete with snacks, smokes, and squishy surfaces alike.
Though the whole thing seemed to be falling apart at just the worst moment, for all their young, hopeful eyes could cast their sights on was a mean static fizz shifting busily like some monochrome virus aching to break the boundaries within which it was contained.
Shrimp and May lie asleep leaning upon on one another, snoring and dribbling heavily, supported only by a shared lump-of-a-couch-cushion and a wooden wall-post.
Wax and Chase have made their way downstairs to scavenge for more snacks and hidden smokes; the quest knowingly incompletable, but at this point, anything will suffice to take their minds off the unrelenting static in place of their absent idols.
Mindy is examining a spot on one of his brand-new, fresh-smelling sneakers while Clark feebly tries to regain his attention with the usage of a rubber band and paperclip.
Lew is seated directly across from the television, hands folded in his lap, waiting with the silent baggy-eyed gaze of someone who looks determined to shake off the death-knell of sleep at any and all cost. The tableau strikes familiarity and is fraternal in nature.
POPBZZZZZZWSHHHHHFFPT-
Flashing blue lights that warp into an enigma.
Ledger's mouth drops wide.
Clark fires the rubber band without watching its trajectory, eyes fixed on the screen.
Mindy's sneaker falls to the floor.
~
0200 - Lakeview Heights Circle - Habersham County, Georgia, U.S.A.
Textures were metal
and their shit clanked
constantly
Green-men.
Rollin’ in a jailhouse
.40 cal welded at-the-hip.
Tip-toe steppin'
Fuckin’ Sweat
Drippin’
Goddamn,
S.W.E.A.T. team
'Pretty sure I pass this place daily on my way to the station'
Shut
the fuck
up
Pulled the bolt
tripped it with a BAD lever
sent that fucker home
with a jolting slam
cocked
locked
ready to rock
Tip-toe razor steppin'
Black, White, and Blue
thin lines in my mind
and down my back
New tat fuckin' itches
MRAP whipped
Uniform line
Steps, Steps, Steps
Form up
Try the side
Course it’s locked
Battering Ram steady
Pin pulled
Swing hard
‘case ya hit it
Egg cracks
after two
Hand on point
Toss it in hot!
Then there’s smoke and I can barely see my hand through it
An outsider’s left eye twitched, feverishly
Sighted between the crosshairs of a glass-etched illuminated reticle floating, static, within optically indexed lenses
He took the shot like a champ, writhing with dignity in a pool of his own scarlet twinkle
run red rabbit,
run,
She didn’t know where she was anymore
She ran and ran
Stumbling along the way
she felt naked
though she was covered
head
to
toe
in Kevlar
Clanking all the fuckin’ way home
down a corridor of previously milling drones
of the undead type that slave in cubes
She tripped on PAPER of all things
Swinging in a Euclidean figure
Bashing through a door
Rolled upward and knelt at the ready
Looks up
and sees
Lights shining brighter than the sun
Not fluorescent
ton of them
It occurred to her,
in that very moment,
that she
was in a film studio.
She maneuvered her weapon deftly
painting radial patterns through time-space
with the liquid movement of a dancer
snapping with intelligence
her Colt submachine gun.
The cameras slowly panned toward her.
Cigarette hanging from the mouth of a dead-eyed camera op
the camera op focused intently now upon his subject
readily-aimed at a readily-aiming subject clad in body armor.
She stared at the voyeur staring at her and panicked like an insect.
Fired upward
smoothly eliminating
each
and every
artificial
star
plucking them
one
by
one
until all light
was finally diminished
to the whirring wheeled voyeurs’ operational touch-screens'
small blue glows
the dead embers of exploded stars
She activated the Strobe function
of the tactical
flashlight
mounted
upon her rifle
eliminated
target
upon
target
Tango down.
Her mouth twisted beneath the spit-damp portion of her jet-black flame-proof balaclava.
The lenses which covered her eyes whined with the sharp, rising pitch of a dying hiss that accompanies the engagement of all night-vision visuals in Hollywood films.
There was no one before her
Only voyeurs
staring blankly
from glass eyes
black apertures
ringed in black metal
or plastic
she didn’t know
or care
soon they rose,
mirrors did,
from the ground
slowly rising,
these mirrors,
from the edges where the floor meets the walls
Surrounded by infinite depths,
she spun radially.
In all of her destruction
she could not destroy the whirring dead embers of cool blue
and soon they echoed too
through the black voids that now eclipsed them in totality
She hadn’t noticed the floor or ceiling
which now too
was toppled with oblivion.
She fired.
Fuck this.
She fired
and fired
and fired
in every direction
apart from the floor,
unaware of her fear
of its consequences.
Glass rained
the sound of a waterfall
composed of chandeliers
The expanse furthered
and soon
as
the
last
bits
of
glass
settled
lazily
from
heaven
she ran
out of ammunition and-,
along with the
tinkling
shatters
left from
late & dist
ant frag
mentslastly
falling to their death,
there was the click click click clickwhich was immediately
indicative of an empty magazine. She sat atop a mirror, in
a mirrored exp a n s e
n o w v a s t and rainingrefracting fragments
of black and blue twisting with a viscious intent
uponspiralling
expertly down. Fuck
it. She gripped her rifle
by the rail and smashed the
glass beneath her feet. It didn’t
break upon first try, but she knew
i/
\t
/.
w\
/e
\a
k/
\e
n/
\e
/d
\.
/w
i/ .\
/t /e
h\ a\
/c
h\ /b
. l\
/o
\w
/.
-To be continued-
About the Creator
Keenan Chiasson
"I want to burn with the spirit of the times. I want all servants of the stage to recogni[z]e their lofty destiny."
-Vsevolod Meyerhold
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.