View post (The third section is begun!)

View thread

Jolly McJollyson
Chick Magnet
Joined: 09/07/03
Posts: 5,457
Jolly McJollyson
Chick Magnet
Joined: 09/07/03
Posts: 5,457
12/15/2006 2:05 am
Here's the third and final section of my story. Well, the first paragraph thereof:

And Then.

I live with my mother in a rust-red, brickcrumbling house. Or, rather, she lives with me—better: resides. Rests, better still. Down beneath the damp basement floorboards she lies prostrate, engulfed in moist earth. Stiffened by death, in the sense that her body has long since ceased to function, she sleeps: wooden. All around her the worms are stirring the dirt, wriggling past her. Dead, under the rotting floor, she decomposes; in life she had decomposed over the floor. Little difference—both were unwanted. And unwitting. She hadn’t much enjoyed life anyhow. Except for her children. Oh, she had many, many children, nursed each and every one at her breast, loved them, spoke to them as they suckled. Mother. A child’s first love, a child’s first sustenance, a child’s first words. Gravitating to her teat, blind, mute infants opened and closed toothless mouths, gumming for their mother’s milk, but no longer.

Now only I remain, my brothers and sisters lying with our mother. I must remain here, in her house—in our house. I’ve left before. Left my mother, left her house. Never for a long time of course. Only briefly, in short spurts, and I kept in contact, writing letters. But now I stay here, to preserve their memory. Trichinosis took them all; parasites fed on their innards, glutting themselves on ignorance, and they ceased, my family. They stopped speaking, though they had never really spoken—to me, to each other—they died in silence. They fell; down into the muck they collapsed, mud oozing over their bodies. And so I placed the boards over them. Concrete would have been a travesty.

Now, always back to now, the house of my mother is empty, save me. Here I mind their graves and talk to them. Yes, I’m always speaking—to them, to myself. I’ve spilled water all over the floor. Dirty water, caking dust-mud all over the kitchen tiles. It was clean when it was in my little glass jar. Sparkling, clear water, I held it in my hand—watched it ripple and shimmer. Then it slipped and fell to the ground, marblelinoleumfloorshattering…
I want the bomb
I want the P-funk!

My band is better than yours...