Funny Kid

I was a funny kid. I think my mother hated how funny I was. 

I almost had her once, her lips split open like a ripe watermelon, she almost laughed. Funny. 

⧫

Dead light in a dead room with dead people, a swarming fugue of blank eyes—they dart into small crevices of computer screens; hidden from sight. White shirts, white tiles, white between the eyes— reverberating in unison; our bodies filled with tepid water. Managers and employees, all consuming cheap, burnt, ancient coffee out of unwashed mugs. For the rest of the day, days, and months, not a single thought will evoke its own humanity—instead, computations and calculations will swirl into the vanilla mud inside us. Passing every cubicle, like dirty hawker stalls selling rusty bread, we all look hungry—as if something starves us. 

I never thought my life was a good example of the capitalist machine—truthfully, machines don’t care for the stunning poultice of laughter, my words would echo awkwardly like dying wishes. I sat there with my fingers poised to correctly output letters in a row for some reason unknown to me. I sat in a dirty hawker stall cubicle and daydreamed about the pastel 1950’s. My computer was hot. 

⧫

Old delightful days, dreamed and touched and known from a lonely rounded bend of time. If only to kiss the wine laden night—and feel the embrace of the last drops of sun. If only to spill ochre blood into the wending gale—and watch fictional places breath its hope. 

The iron wreath of modernity—it’s venal task arriven—to soon displace its man, and by automatons be driven. 

⧫

“5 o’clock there buddy, where are you off to?” 

Gerald was a loose skinned fat man with no wife and no children; pushing fifty, sad. He was putting his coat on, his torpid body careening like a saloon car. My computer was off now, it had been for hours. 

“Just home, you know how it is.” I replied. 

“Well, if you got nothing to do I’m free, wanna grab a beer or something? Ya always tell me you will.” His unctuous pores were steeped in cowardly, un-virile sweat. I hated him, his swathing body, his radiating, corpulent humidity was nightmarish. I was already hot, the computer made me hot. 

“Wish I could, but tonight’s movie night with the wife—she’d kill me if I missed it.” 

His face scrunched into a pit of curls, his brow clunking and stupid and civilly venemous to spectate. 

“Ya okay, well—good night to ya then.” He trudged off to somewhere. 

The computer was hot and then I overreacted, he’s a good guy. A good guy, fun to be around, funny. 

⧫

The afterwork highway, cars gnashing through the pale beauty, the fragrant melancholy of these minutes—before nightfall. I was awake to it; I drove to this waltzing moon, this acquiescent sun. I find the beauty and the laughter here, the relief from the hot haze of starvation.  I drive and think of all the ways I wished I was—I want to share the laughter. I was funny at some point, beyond scope—in the past. I want to make my wife laugh, she never laughs. 

I got home on time, according to the calculations I always calculate; I knew I would be. 

I walked through the door to see her, in white and green—as some elven creature made of secret magic, her hue and color of love and grace and forgiveness. I often begged her in silence for mercy after these days, to touch the warmth from her thriven—luminescent charisma. I was going to make her laugh today. 

She smiled to me as she saw me, “Oh, there you are. Okay day at work, honey?”. 

“You know, the regular stuff.” came droning out of my slackjaw. 

“Well that’s good, regular is always comforting.” She smiled and returned to what she was doing a second ago. I followed her with my eyes. 

I had to say something soon or it would all be too late. 

⧫

The skittering sparks came off the iron, ricocheting into nothingness—the smiling old man gave me a singed flower from the fire pit, some sort of bitter winter comestible; meant to inspire thoughts of spring. He said “Look here, see? This is the winter's heart, touch it—do you feel it singing? Silent but still heard in the cold, it remembers it all for you”. His smile was made of unbreakable courage and love. I was fifteen. 

He moved in closer to the Irori; he picked another piece from the edge of the coals. He brought it close to me, a small silver fish. “Look here, all the heart of this small one—to swim up this mountain. His spirit is greater than both of us. Look, you see his scales; so smooth, to slip between the narrow rocks. You see, his quest is like yours—you see?” He smiled again, his hands were a brown clay—worn, beautiful and unrelenting. I had come here some time after my mother died. 

“We must give ourselves to the mountain, the small songs and sacred courage of its life. Look through the windows, out into the night—feel this undying life; feel it and be free.” I was certain I was never going to meet his wishes for me—they were too humaine and loving and I was fifteen and could never die.

 He was standing now, somewhere in my mind—in perfect detail. There was some sort of miracle I left there, on that mountain; some sort of unknown sustenance. 

I want to go back to the way it was, before the mountain, before the old man breathed human comfort into me. I want to enjoy the world's fruits. 

Tonight, or never. 

⧫

“Do you remember the day we met?” I say, almost out of nowhere.

She came back into the room with a bottle of wine and two glasses. As she looked up to me there was a little smile on her face. She poured both of us a glass. 

“Of course I do”, she said in a low, reminiscent voice. 

“Me too, I remember it all”, I said. I took the glass but didn’t drink. 

She looked at me for a minute, as if seeing someone wake up from a long sleep—she was surprised by my question I think. 

I added, “I think I fell in love with your eyes first, I could hear your heart's song through them.”

“And what about all the rest of me, not too exciting?” She did a little side-to-side swerve jokingly and smiled.

If only to kiss the wine laden night. 

I took her hand. 

“You know what I thought about you when I first saw you tonight?” I said. 

She traced the outside of my hand with her finger, her eyes gleaming. 

“No, I really don’t” 

“That you looked like some sort of mystical creature, some impossibly beautiful elven princess or something like that.” I paused before I added “It was almost like I was meeting you again for the first time. Like that first day.” 

Her hands tightened in mine. 

It was time. 

⧫

I will not return to the ways of man, instead—my head turns round and faces left—to oblivion. I was and am a solid mass of evil, the giver—the destroyer. So to these good faces around me, have peace in love and rightness in works; for my final ghost—treacherous and repugnant—is come. I long for my mother's blood again, like some angelica, certain and luxurious. I long for the great lost rim to appear, from the high craterous mountains. 

I killed her—my mom—when I was fourteen. She almost laughed, her mouth split open like a ripe watermelon. I dream about it every night. She was always laughing. 

Maybe it’s some sort of secret desire—to deny the old man and his mountain, my manager his servant, my wife her husband. Some sort of secret love to return to the laughing days, the winter months—full of bitterness and silence. Killer child, bad seed, evil evil evil never good spawn of an alcoholic rapist father. No wonder I always hoped to make up for it, to her, to the world—to make her laugh like I knew she could. 

⧫

Her hand was loose around mine now, some sort of muscle reflex pushing against me still. Some flashes of life came through every few seconds. It was as if she was a completely different person, some sort of spasmodic dope. I could hear her making a little chuckle, soft but definitely audible—her body was sinking towards the floor. I sat there smiling—thinking about the white and the green.  But as she fell slowly, thunking onto the ground—that’s when she really started laughing. 

Her blood was spilling from her mouth, her chest cavity completely ruptured. She could barely breathe, she was in agony I’m sure of it. 

And in that moment, looking down at her, I could hear her laughter—her beautiful elven smile reclaimed—her unmistakable laugh reverberating the room. Her loving grace grew as she faded, her hues and colors brightening—some angelica, certain and luxurious came her laughter. 

I stood above it all. She fainted after some time. 

The laughter came and went throughout the rest of the night; I drank and sang with it— seeing the blood intertwine with the winter gales—giving every fictional place a new found hope.