A Man Sits Down and Begins Talking 14

     there is a great need in this modern world society for people who don't say anything. I am most certainly not one of these. wastrels waste away in the evening time. What is a wastrel, anyway? Which one are you? The one in the middle? God, you look dumb. Why did you put that hat on in the first place? It makes you look fat. In stripes, you know. What? No, not since yesterday. Hah hah hah. Yes, Mary's married now. He's a carpenter from New Jersey. Has aspirations of being the next Harrison Ford. But really he's quite ugly. Don't know what Mary saw in him. Their kids are going to be AWFUL!!!
     Turning the lights on. In the darkness something had been shifting like ball bearings in a box, but now there didn't seem to be anything there. Joe stepped forward, touched the pedal switch on the floor accidentally. The wall swung about. Something crept out of the cracks and crevices, forming a shape. A form shaping itself. Jagged broken bony horse, eyes of liquid mercury, guts seething in its translucent stomach, knives on its hooves, it emerges from the pit. Growling words in a baltic language. Oh god, Joe said. Oh, god. He was wrong. The horse was only a demi-god. It tore him open and chewed on his intestines and howled laughter, stabbing into his eyes.
     There is no escape. Mary's kids are really THAT BAD. You'd better believe it. They're lurking in the cellar, the sub-basements, shifting their sagging flesh, stomping on your floorboards, moaning dead words in a dead voice in a dead language, pummeling insulation with soggy fists. They know who you are. You, however, mistake them for other things, and falter into their waiting arms. Sex is the hypotenuse. I am squared. Add me to something, squared. Take me somewhere. You never take me anywhere. Damn you. Curse you. Hide yourself beneath the chairs beneath the windows. You do not deserve to feel the light prick your skin. Shall you not bleed? Shall you not...seek revenge?????
     I pushed the blade deeper, watched the red seep out over my hands and puddle on the floor. I gasped. I never thought it could be so good. I took out a cigarette. "Again," I said, handing over the cigarette. "No," she said. "I'm dead already." I shrugged, agreeing. There was no way out of it. The French were right. The French are always right. I laughed, and shoved her over onto the pile.

10/1/97, 2/18/98

Jim Genzano