Saturday, February 18, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
"Noah's Dove"
Nobody ever believes me. I look them in the eye. I put my hands in my pockets so that I won’t
fidget. I tell them over and over,
sometimes even when they ask, sometimes just to have something to do. People don’t say I’m crazy. They don’t say anything. My hands come out of my pockets. My words come out faster. I’ve shown them the scars where the feeding
tubes were, the circular spot on my left temple where the hair refuses to
grow. They nod and raise their
eyebrows. I guess I can see where
they’re coming from. It’s a lot to take
in. They think it's the pipe.
Just a matter of perspective,
you know, a big leap of logic for them.
It was for me. Once there was a me that didn’t understand. That wasn’t crazy, if you will, before all
the tubes and tests. But it’s true. It’s all true, every last word.
When The King died, they were
debating about what to do with the body.
He had gotten really fat in the past few years, his hair was glued on,
and they didn’t want that on TV so much.
Or the whole toilet thing. So
they kept his body in the morgue under lock and key. Two cops sat in there playing pinochle among
all of the dead bodies, drinking coffee over loaded, hip-slung pistols. The real business of the morgue was shut
down: new bodies were referred to other hospitals outside of the Memphis
area. It was really quite a pain if your
grandma died around then, I’ve heard. That
was during my time, but I never had a grandma.
It’s kind of touching that they did all of that for him, all the same.
This turned out to be the better
end of the deal for The King, who would have wound up beneath six feet or so of
dirt, maybe burned into ashes and sold for $100 a gram. They were watching, had been fans since the
beginning. They loved The King. He’d been broadcast for years by then. He was even better than that German guy that
they had heard first.
They had decided to take him
with them. He was dead, sure, but they
saw this as only a mere technicality. A
hurdle, nothing more. They had the
technology, as they say.
So they broke into the hospital
late the first night. It really wasn’t
that hard, they had plenty of narcotics at their disposal to drug the languid
guards and bored nurses they stumbled upon.
They had been given survival and evasion training prior to their
assignment, but the mere sight of them stunned the unfortunate souls in their
path. Quick injections left any memories
fuzzy and impressionable.
It was a cakewalk, as we say. They just needed the grey matter.
It was weeks after the body had
been dealt with, when The King seemed to finally come back into
consciousness. Its vocal processor would
have to be upgraded to fit the actual chord ultrasounds they had on
record. But he was there, sure
enough. Confused as all hell, but he
eventually rolled with the punches like they knew that he would. He was a real trooper.
They constructed a simulation
for him, letting him be where he wanted to be.
He had to go through the motions of travel, but there was no hindrance
of his freedom. He rode in
Cadillacs. He boarded planes to sit in
first class. Painfully lovely
stewardesses brought him scotch and phenobarbital. Most weren’t wearing panties. It was fantastic.
When he got around to it, after
playing with the women and the drugs, he took it upon himself to play a
show. They had installed an interface
unit to serve as his manager. It was a
machine, sure, but the only vehicle of communication that they had with The
King. The unit arranged all of the
necessary subroutines and macros that would be required for such a
display.
It didn’t take long. It would be held in Memphis, on Beale
Street. A stage would be flanked by the
largest TV’s ever imagined by a disembodied central nervous system and an artificial
interpreter. The King would wear gold
lame, and the lights mounted on the roofs would be blinding when they enveloped
him. He would be the Sun radiating,
bringing life to the people, and they would stretch out into the distance
beyond sight and comprehension.
The day came. The King had spent the night before in a
paranoid haze of pharmaceuticals, hiding behind a blue woolen blanket in a
corner of his bedroom, which seemed smaller, now, and he could not figure out
why. The light coming through the window
had stuttered. He knew that he had seen
it. His eyes closed, he breathed deeply,
feeling the drugs and the dark that kept him just above the level of total
panic. Sleep found him at some point, and
he woke the next morning cold, with a bladder that threatened to burst.
He took the stage with a long
stride. The crowd simulation was enough
to render someone with actual ears deaf and quaking. The King could hear it all, and his mind grew
to perceive the myriad of different voices calling to him. Individuals moved in and out of the din; he
coughed into the microphone.
“Good evening,” he said, smirking on one side
of his face. “Glad that y’all could make
it.”
The band kicked into a high
energy number, and he could feel the microphone and the electricity of the PA
respond to his voice, resonating and shaking the stage beneath his feet. The lights kicked into an explosion of
color. Bright white spotlights seared
through the gold lame suit, reflecting and making large bands of daylight
glance in and around the buildings and the crowd. The lights never grew hot. Things should have caught fire; they were
that bright.
He felt alive. He felt more than alive. His voice warmed up before he had even
started. He sang better than he had ever
before. Every note was there, waiting for
him to choose it. The band was demure,
but on point. They never missed a beat,
nor was a single fill lacking any energy or excitement. When it came to the slow numbers, everybody
cried and it was beautiful.
Of course they streamed this
across the network. It was well
received, even kept on file in many ships’ databases. Sometimes The King would watch it over fried
chicken legs when it was replayed on the TV in his bedroom, which he had
remodeled since the event. The colors
from his set moved over his face, reflected in his black hair, and fell around
the walls of the room. The King felt
peace.
I only caught a glimpse of the
real him while I was there. They drew
some of my blood, ran an EKG or something.
Other unmentionables, a lot of wires hung from me. I stared around at the sights when they moved
me from place to place, upright and immobilized to something flat and warm. It was like being underground in a subway,
but quiet and no pee smell. They parked
me next to him for most of my visit.
Next to his floating brain and
stem, there was a screen where you could see what he was seeing. From the way he acted, I think he was
happy. I don’t know whether he’s still
with them or not. I don’t know how long
they can keep him alive.
They finished their business
with me, and left me cold and naked on the side of the highway outside
Senatobia.
“You alright, Ma’am?”
The two bright lights were circled
by blue flashes. A deep, hungry growl
threatened from the darkness behind them.
“They were here! Did you
see them?”
“Ma’am, all I see is a muddy lady, naked as a
jay bird in the middle of a field.”
“Did they send you to pick me up? Oh, they’re so thoughtful. I was beginning
to get cold.”
She smiled and hugged her bare
breasts to her chest. The Highway
Patrolman went to the door of his car, opened it, and began to call in to the
station.
“They didn’t want me to get cold, so they sent
you. You kind, kind man, you.”
“Well, alright,” the patrolman said into his
mic, “but I’m not cleaning the car when we get down there, now, dammit,” he
laughed.
“C’mon, you.”
He motioned for the woman to
come closer to the lights.
“Are we going to go tell everyone, now?”
“Yes, Ma’am.
We’re going to go tell everyone everything. You just sit tight here in the backseat.”
“They are so thoughtful to have sent you for
me.”
“That they were,” he said smiling. “That they
were.”
Shutting the rear door of the
patrol car, he chuckled to himself and shook his head.
The arresting officer didn’t
believe her any more on the way to the station than he did in the field.
“There’s a piece of truth in all rumors, you
know.”
“Yes, Ma’am.
There sure is.”
“The King is so happy. It was so beautiful what they’d done for
him.”
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Platform Building Crusade
http://rachaelharrie.blogspot.com/p/writers-platform-building-crusade.html
Angels
The police circled the stones. Lowered brows fixed on
beer bottles and cigarette butts breaking the monotony of loosed plastic flower
petals and crisp, etched granite. A large headstone bore the dripping red
enamel of an illegible zig-zag. Several stone angels lay face down in the
grass. A less weathered, feminine angel was missing a wing.
One of the officers, carefully stepping over the foot
markers of the graves, righted an angel to its pedestal. Its eyes were a
harlequin of permanent marker. The wingless angel, sat up, had paint
dripping down where its wing had previously been. The officer sighed and
shook his head. The wing was nowhere to be seen.
The forms were filled in black ink. Calls were made
over microphones to the station. The officers made note of each offense
in quickly scrawled script at the bottom of their pads.
Returning to their car, they closed the metal doors and
drove away, leaving the cemetery to silence.
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