Story Machine

hunched over, wrists slack, back hurt but still better, talking to people on the computer than in real-life.

this year he's trying new things like baklava and kicking the cat.

her biggest fear was not of failing in the profession of musician or writer or artist or filmmaker or anything so complex and chancy but that it would end up being something so much simpler that made her feel complete.

kick! pow! punch!  eyes shut, blood in his mouth, that tiny moment of private silence he tries to image it only as though he's just received a winning red-iron flux-flow of lilliputian currency.

dizzy, laughing, oops-tripping on your head-to-toe inebriation somehow has circumscribably become the only time you allow yourself to get by not worrying about the spindling chances of that clumsy fall resulting in love.

she isn't your girlfriend but sometimes, still, she lets smuggle past a clandestine hope to sneak an appearance in one of your dreams.

--it kind of sucks she said, running a finger through brambles, tangles, across a temple, a peak:

 he'd spend hours, mind-numbing, bone-weary hours meticulously drawing pictures of people's faces yet always he couldn't help but have them come out looking like his own.

 pour mieux ou pour pis, hier il est tombé aveuglément amoureuse.

the movie "garden state" didn't change her life but "fight club" did and she wondered if that meant she had somehow stumbled into a life she wasn't supposed to be living.

the only way she'd let it end: kicking and screaming like the way she came in.

and he huffed and he puffed and he blew the world down.

when she thought she was dreaming her legs wouldn't go and her mouth wouldn't move and he said hey baby don't worry I'll do the work for you and she closed her eyes and tried to tap her shoes.

memories were silly like string and like geese because she'd remember impossible things -- him making a snow angel with just his back and the ground and she'd laugh a little, quiet, move on, but be careful to look just in case whenever stepping down.

at times life just got her and all words were lost and so if someone therewhere tried a conversation, she could only just put a hat on her rabbit: oh, anglais?  je ne le parle pas.

 pale and stomping and ready for action: love, you're like the springtime.

talking to herself, or maybe to the devil:

--it'd be a beautiful ending, but I'd rather not die today.

 --I think I'll have found my soulmate when someone just knows why I've ordered a chicken salad sandwich, with milk and the waitress just asks two percent or fat-free.

not sure which is bad or worse, but watching television makes her feel better about her own life.

she whispers auschwitz auschwitz not out of guilt or as a way to mourn but because it feels right that word whispered in her mouth and what makes her feel worse still is that for things like that she can't make herself feel anything else.

I stopped sleeping after my mother died.  my father told me she'd gone on vacation and I asked him why and why couldn't we go too and he told me it was a vacation only for those too exhausted with living and I couldn't help it but I'd accidentally nap on the bus in the mornings and she'd never show up in my dreams.

she wished she could trade lovesongs for kisses but realized she wouldn't be making much of a profit, at this rate.

a perfect movie moment would be if all sound stopped around her in the hallway and you could just hear that one song, a cappella, and quite possibly maybe she smiles.

 instead of a simple good-by or I-love-you she writes with all sincerity I've come to the conclusion that the empty quiet is most certainly the best and the worst time of day and then quite simply just her name.

it was silly (she knew of course) but sometimes she'd listen to that one queen song and smile because it was true, she really did.

the words twisting in her throat she made some tea, because that's all that they'd really taught her to do back at home.

--I assure you I'm not lonely! and he smiles oh so warmly but is only talking to himself.

she picks out the Big Books because they're easiest to hide behind in empty lecture halls and coffee shops and school buses and in chance of falling the ones he'd be most likely to bend down and help her pick up.

we were worried, worried-worried: and only fifteen minutes late but with a knack for having everything else go wrong it seemed his biggest talent.

watching her quietly hum christmas carols in the middle of the supermarket canned soup aisle maybe it'd make you full of cheer if only she didn't seem so goddamned depressed.

the true story about santa claus was that he fathered a family but was never home on that one most important day of the year.

--like getting lost in a bookstore or sleeping in class, and she bites at her nails like she always does and looks you straight in the eye (or at least you'd imagine so over the telephone), I fall out and into love so so fast.

and you can't quite tell if this is a verdict or maybe just an apology but the forebodence sneaks in as you take a breath.

there was this one girl who'd ride the bus with her eyes closed and her headphones on and she'd sing along whenever that one really good song came on and sometimes he'd tell that story when the conversation turned to those people that they knew but wouldn't even be able to recognize in real-life and they'd all laugh and he did too but afterwards he started looking at his shoes while paying his fare and sitting in the back with his music real loud waiting and waiting for that one song to come before his stop home did.

you have five-minute-dreams about children getting murdered and what worries you the most is that it only takes two to wake up.

you can't win them over with wishes for kisses hoping, maybe, that everyone isn't already in love.

she swore to god it would never happen again but he doesn't believe in any sort of higher power so who's to say what's truthful or not?

silly as a goose, you just sit and you wait and you believe that this is over when it has barely even gotten through to the best part yet.

and she turns and even in the dark and in the shadows you can still see that she's smiling:

isn't this just the most wonderful thing in the world?

she was swimming too fast and breathing not hard enough and it was a little like trying to fall in love with everyone at once.

sometimes when he'd look at the streetlights he'd imagine they were people so then late at night and out the window there'd be a whole avenue of brightly-beaming friends, waiting.

and his dreams he can't help.

she bathes, remembering only regretfully that lost long-ago feeling of sand between toes.

we'd convince ourselves, really, it's just fireworks and so we'd close our eyes, listening slowly, and watch those after-shadows of the kitchen light reverberate across our minds as we silently celebrated whatever the world surely must have been.

maybe, they'd say, those days could have been better spent than sitting waiting for a stork to land nearby.

his (secret) secret is that he likes to watch (imbecilic) shows because that is the only time when it seems possible for a (pretty) girl like that to like a (homely) guy like him.

and in barged the woman of his dreams but all he could think to say, quivering:

--please, I'm sorry, I can't let you use the company phone it's for employees only and he reached out to shake her hand but she wouldn't let him take it.

with two arms crossed at the waist the days were pretty lonely but trust us: the nights were worse.

--and what does this make me? she asked with her pallid silence and trembling hand yet even with the answer of a thousand empty faces mutely staring she couldn't make herself consider it enough of a verdict to mean something, really.

and the mouse, listening in, sometimes gets the feeling that they're all too often speaking of unrequited dreams.

words were all that she could think of in that cluttered head of hers.

what she hated more than anything was when people didn't understand so sometimes she decided it was better just not to say anything at all.

--do you? do you really?

and she shook her head, shook shook shook shook.

--does it really matter if I'm happy as long as I have everything I want?

he begs, pleads, as silently as he can but still all she returns, a soft admonish: you'll never feel the things that I do.

silly boy -- his head was too big to fit in through the door.

--I don't really want to be alone right now he says to no one in particular, grimacing at his pale reflection in the toaster oven door.

listening to those old records that you used to like so much, assuring us, patting our hands, that it's nothing, nothing sentimental when really truthfully it calms her, hearing at the end that broken whisper it's over it's over before she picks up the needle again.

he'd have dreams in which he'd meet anna karenina as he waited for his train and he'd say hey look, it's like the sun's almost smiling and she'd smile back and wait there beside him.

what really startled us was that she seemed so serene--us, cooing and fawning, asking, are you sure you will be okay? are you sure it will be all right?  and she got on the plane:

--yes yes yes just one more step in my life.

it was his personal philosophy that the movie would "suck big balls" without the comedic presence of george mcfly but he went anyway because they'd bought the tickets and besides, they were his friends so they must have had some logic in their reasoning (or so he desperately hoped).

and when he tried to kiss her she smiled and held his hand instead.

he was always saying to us and to himself too I guess: don't ever settle for even a smidgeon less than 100% but we could tell, when his eyes would close during those especially strenuous after-school specials that he could never really forgive himself for giving her the perfect birthday present but exactly one year late.

--hey you, you're a pussy, and he thought of the greatest comback of all time but didn't say it the way you save your funniest joke for the biggest crowd because you really only can tell it once.

even mirrors would smile as she passed them, straightening the edges of her crooked, homely face in mother-like sympathy.

well someone had to do it so on the night of their wedding he got up with expensive wine glass in hand and expressed his fear that maybe this hasty wedding was a mistake; that maybe one day they'd fall not in but out of love, what with how already he hated the way she'd sing styx so loudly in the shower and everyone laughed it off but looking in her gray eyes by accident: he knew it she understood.

every day he'd draw a light house so finally one day she asked him, why are you drawing that? why do you always draw that? and he told her it was because he couldn't ever seem to leave that ocean-smell behind.

what they told him was wrong because why couldn't they understand that merely living should be enough?

it was the morning after he had given up on thoughts of suicide and he drank his coffee and he ate his eggs and the door opened as if to say look, here comes the sun.

--you know, I spent this whole day trying to work myself up to call and tell her what a heinous bitch she was for firing me.
--yeah, what did she say?
--no, that's not the point, looking over at me. I didn't call her. I didn’t call. and it took me so long, trying to work myself up to do it. of course I didn't call.
I noticed just how big the dark circles were, under her eyes.
--but she was a bitch…

and he did like the homemade better than the restaurant-bought french toast but he didn't have the heart to tell her, I was wrong, it was you the whole time…

it was over coffee that one tuesday when she reminded me so much of my dead sister:
--I hope you do well at college, conrad, she said, I really do.  I think you will, and she shook her head and spoon-clanked the edge of her cup one more time, saying, I'll miss you, kiddo, I really will.

we rode our bicycles as though we were afraid that something was chasing us, but it was nothing more than a fear of no longer hearing the sound of the wind.

limerick jim was too funny for laughs.

not standing one more moment of this madness she went right away to the nearest catholic church and confessed all her sins, straight up, before realizing that she really hadn't done anything wrong.

the music we always listened to wasn't loud enough anymore so ted bought a k.i.s.s. album and we listened to it one night all the way through in his mom's basement but we haven't really  talked much after that.

--I don't care what they say, you know, about everything.  she looked so small, with her cheek pressed to the table's glass.  about what I want and stuff, you know, because what I want, she closed her eyes, just seconds longer than blinking, and opened them:
--I want red, lipstick-lips.

like soft blankets it covered the ground but in the silence he wouldn't allow them even just a touch for he'd never breathed-in anything so entirely like a movie-picture on one of those enormous screens.

with her fingers spread out like cobwebs gracing the edge of the chair you hardly remember that you've just met in a psychiatrist's office, only how you want to kiss her, badly.

to calm down he'd remember that one time during the windstorm when they hid in the basement and she let him hold her hand.

he was worried because whenever he lay awake wondering it was only as to why he hadn't yet fallen asleep.

milo fell in love with the girl on the bus, that day.  she wasn't pretty and didn't smile back when he did, but that was what made her beautiful.

this was the most important day of her young life but all she could think about was whether or not she left the kettle on.

the walls were covered in pictures, pretty with once-ago fantasies, and he wondered to what exactitude the residents actually lived there.

--you can't be in love.  he is a monster and monsters don't fall in love.

they called him snake-eyes not because of lucky dice or a two-pronged tongue but because he couldn't seem to slither half way across a room without someone feeling bitten.

--one day, we're all gonna fall in love, she said, sawing into the scattered french-toast remains, right?  she put down her fork, delicately on an untouched napkin, and stared through her water glass.  but don't worry.  I'll still go to your wedding if you have one.   and I'll clap, and I'll laugh when everybody else is silent because maybe that's what's beautiful.

my grandma had a secret ingredient that she'd never tell us so when we asked she'd just say love and it took me thirty years to figure out that she really just meant paprika.

I wrote a story in my head, today, but fell asleep on the bus and forgot about it between the library and waking up just in time to ping my stop.

it was the saddest birthday you'd ever been to.  no balloons, the cake a little burnt, but mostly because as you stood in the back with your suit all worn and gray, straight from work, you knew how much you really just wanted not to have to be there for him.

she stood in the doorway, cradling the new baby on her hip.

--what are you building, milo? she asked, shifting the sleeping infant into her arms.

he looked up at her momentarily with his long-gone father's big brown eyes and then stacked another small wooden block.

--I'm conquering an empire.

I came back from the war and the doctors told me that my wife had died from a severe couruptomy and I looked and looked and asked and asked but couldn't find out what they'd meant.

months before she ever died she wondered if she'd even ever really started living, anyway.

the sweet whispers for which she’d waited a contorted lifespan really paled to nothing compared with those longago bedtime lullabies.

the subject of the conversation was irrelevant as our eyes met and we knew that it was over.

it was raining when the funeral was over, and she stood outside laughing, knowing, for sure this time, that there was no god up there crying.

he did it for years, really, twice a day and sometimes once more, brushing his dentures in the morning and the evening before realizing that that was what getting old was for -- for eating cookies without the worry.

with a pencil sharpened, hopeless, maybe, but instead: well, it's not like I'm going to science-college…

she wasn't a believer but on christmas eve she woke to find that someone had replaced the contents of her water glass with lemonade.

the bus was crowded, today, so I had to sit up front near the driver and I watched her eyes scan one of the rearview windows as I thought I heard her whisper that she was lonely.

--as a small child I never had much motivation to make friends because I'd always assume that I'd just make some when I went to college.  he shook his head, perhaps a bit ruefully.  maybe I should've gone to graduate school after all.

she could taste the sound of his crooked smile and she knew it she was older.

she wiped the thick lenses and replaced her spectacles and, looking at her parents in a renewed sense of focus, she realized that she wasn't the only one.

with cold-chapped fingers we drank eggnog straight from the carton because you didn't like coffee and that was the only thing around anymore.

--I wish I were a fat, ugly man, she said to him.

--you better start real quick, then, he replied, scratching at the line of his jaw.  'cause you have a long, long way to go.

luckily, she was the type of person who pondered inloud before speaking:
--what?  may 35th!  that’s only three days away!

that last time, before leaving, she whispered in my ear, I wish I'd fallen in love with someone whom I believed when they told me I was beautiful.

not that she especially has an aversion to roses or sunlight, but, pursing her lips and looking back on the puerile folklore that sporadically colored her childhood, she decides that she really does like snow white better than rose red.

little brown

rabbit why do

you cry

--Have you ever noticed... she mutters and you have to ask her to pipe up, because she is speaking so quietly and into her potatoes with thick, grayish-colored gravy that you cannot possibly hear her over the clatter of plates and familial chatter.

She clears her throat and tries again.

--Have you ever noticed how people on TV shows never seem to have anybody that in real life they'd actually want to be friends with?

betsy looks up at me from the living room floor. she\s hugging her legs tangled in front of her. her pants are ripped and i can see her underwear. it looks dirty. i don\t really love her anymore but sometimes we pretend. well? i\ve interrupted her tv show. not that she really watches it but she hates when i disrupt wheel of fortune. honestly i don\t give a flying fuck. i just look at her. her socks are stained like nicotine fingers. like it even matters. well- did you cop some? you were gone long enough. i take the baggie out of my pocket. she grabs it. bitch. can you hand me that mirror on the coffeetable? it\s been two days since our last cut. i hand her the mirror and then take the other shit out of my pockets- straw- exactoknife from her art kit. she hasn\t used it since before when we thought we could dig to china. she cuts the lines quickly. inhales. exhales. don\t you want some? she rubs her nose- hands me the straw. she has that look on her face. i want to pass it up. i want to go cold turkey- get some help. get my job back. i want to stop. soon. tomorrow. today. i lower my head.

We sat with our knees touching and I eyed him suspiciously because there was nowhere else to look.  I thought that he wanted me to leave, or got that feeling, anyhow, but he kept reading.  He looked up.
--It's really good.
He was always mumbling, even without the thick glasses or private-school ties that he always seemed to be wearing.
--It really is.
I didn't know what to say and instead bit my index fingernail.
--But isn't there some part that you'd want to change?
--Yeah, but I mean, it's good.  It'll win.  How couldn't it win?
--Yes, but...
--Exactly.
He stretched his legs out and handed the papers back to me and smiled.  I smiled back but really just wanted to take those glasses off and brush his hair out of his face and really look into his eyes.

when she looked out the window, she could see the way that the driveway reflected the light from her bedside lamp, because it was raining.  she watched the rain, and she wished it did, but it didn't really remind her of anything, just umbrellas and splashpuddles and mud up to one's ankles because that's what the spring's like, crocuses and golashes, nobody who doesn't know it doesn't know nothing.  she wished she had perfect eyesight.  yeah, that was what she really wished.  she thought about a fire or a natural disaster or what if she were kidnapped?  what would she do then, no glasses in sight, her contacts off somewhere next to the bathroom sink.  with its broken drain.  no one ever bothered to fix that drain.  it remained, years it must've been already, dripping, in the way that kind of took away the loneliness of a latenight shit.  but that didn't matter now, did it?  no, it didn't and she knew it.  she clicked off the lamp and lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the rain now.  she didn't close her eyes, but she felt this sort of throbbing, this somesortof pain in her temples but in her stomach, too, this knowing, just: I'm fucked.