Four

My brain burns. Last night I ate lasagna and had a screwdriver along with it. One screwdriver, five screwdriver. Now my brain just burns. The chemicals that have been inside it make it scream. Each particle has it's own different pitch and it creates a beautiful dissonance. My friend Robo knows how it feels to have chemicals stuck in his brain. Last night he drank a vile of LSD and ate a bag of mushrooms. I watched him as he looked at himself in the mirror. He started to touch his face gently and he told me his eyes were bright red. They looked brown to me. I asked him how many times he had been in love. He said he loved four women and they all knew each other. They were all best friends and lived in the same apartment together. He called the women up and they came over to my house. I wanted to meet them. There was Heather, a lively brunette, Jodie, a shy redhead, Wendy, a nasty and crude beach blonde, and Alice, a quite normal woman with jet black hair. Robo kissed Wendy as she walked in the door and they went to have sex in my bathroom. I didn't mind. I was at peace with everything at the time. Alice asked me if I had ever read 'In Cold Blood'. Of course Alice. I read it more than once a year. Jodie wanted to know what my short haired pug's name was. Jodie, his name is T-bone the Killer. Hello Heather. You are beautiful. Do you think I'm handsome or a jerk? Somewhere in the middle? Okay. Where are you Robo? This is a little awkward. I don't know how to entertain these women you love. I took some of the drugs Robo had laying on my table. They made me sick. Heather took the drugs with me and told me she now thought I was handsome. Oh! I was pleased. Drugs are so deceptive. The four women left my house as the sun started to rise. Robo and I watched the Discovery Channel for fourteen hours.

Radio Frequency, Interrupted

In 1895, the world changed completely. Tobias McMillan invented the rubberband. Now, nobody would ever worry about documents coming apart. Everything could be organized with a snap. The day Tobias came up with his idea, he was feeling antsy about his divorce. None of his papers and legal documents were ever together. This worried him.

He lived alone in his West Texas home. His life was now a simple one. No more than two weeks before, it had been different. He had a wife who he despised and a young boy who he thought the world of. Now he had nothing. The past few days hadn't been easy, but he was actually in good spirits for the most part. He complained a little to his dog, Handle, about his failing heart and back aches. This was normal. Handle had seen Tobias grow ill over the years. Tobias had seen Handle grow old and tired. Two old souls. They were meant to be.

One particular evening, Tobias had a visitor. A young farm boy looking for simple work in town. Tobias put him to work early the next morning, finding the young man, who he learned was named Burt, to be useful. Burt helped him with relatively easy tasks that Tobias had grown sick of completing. Burt got a room in a small house in town with the money he earned working.

He was a boy, no older than seventeen. A runaway at the age of twelve. He could never relate to any human. He learned this on his third birthday when asked if he was happy. "I don't feel that. Ask me how I feel". His father then re-worked his question to suit him, " Well, how do you feel son?". Burt replied, " Tired. Longing for real".

He was thought mentally ill by his family, who packed their things in the middle of the night and left him in their house alone to die the next day. Three indian brothers looking for shelter in the house discovered Burt that very night. He was grateful, although he really hated the way indians lived. Slobs. Bathing in filth. Destroying their bodies with 'medicines'. No indian in this tribe lived to be forty. They accepted it too! How awful.

The chief was a heavy smoker. He coughed at night, keeping the whole tribe awake with his wheezing. "Only smoke when white man pass into town", he would say. "But chief, you smoke--", another would start to say. " Now. Smoke heal. No fresh air. Smoke", he interrupted. He lit one up. And another. His marijuana smoke was the only thing the white men enjoyed. "Smoke funny. Make you feel new man", he would say. It was true. Every night the chief turned into a grain of sand and he was gone. Only for a little while.

Heavy Lifting

The creek looked different to him after all these years. Construction and flooding made it look man-made almost. He went back home to find most of his possessions missing and his second wife twenty years older. Although it should have worried him, he didn't mind. He was in a great place mentally. Physically however, he could hardly walk. He used a homemade wheelchair he built out of household appliances such as WD-40 and Windex. It got him around just fine.

While feeding his recently aged wife through a straw, he discovered that not only did he feel content with his own life, but he finally felt content with the rest of the world. This was a first. Without saying a word to his nearly vegetative wife, he wheeled himself outside to the bottom of his driveway. "It's beautiful, the whole place! There's such a calmness to everything", he yelled to people walking by. They ignored him, but his smile never faded.

He phoned his older brother, Abel. The excitement was too much. Abel had been asleep for three days and was finally awakened by the ringing. He decided to let the machine pick it up. Abel didn't feel like talking to anyone. He was frightened by most things. School buses, bodies of water, movie rental stores. Abel unplugged his phone and ran down his apartment stairs. He saw a woman he had almost married. He ignored her. She was beautiful. Fully Sicilian and long-legged. Abel liked to admire her from far away on some afternoons when he could be alone.

He ran into his landlord's room and told her that he would be moving out because he had no money and only felt like sleeping the rest of his life. She understood. He packed up his things, robbed some of his neighbors who never locked their doors, and went on the lam for a few days. He found a rain gutter that he could sleep in.

Welcome..

This is a place for me to breathe.