Finally finished.

With the first FULL draft. Thank you God! Anything that shows up as question marks was originally a Chinese character. If you want I'll give you the translations.

Doubting Thomas

Thomas had heard curates and academics lecture endlessly in the corridors of the museum, their words bouncing off the cold walls in invisible, insubstantial waves, their rhetoric as sculpted as the marble pillars: art for art’s sake is not art, art for one’s own sake is not art, art for others is not art, divine sublimity for the sake of creation: that is art. What pretensions! Voices, windy echoing on the cold walls: whisper, shudder, consonant, vowel, unintelligible but for a word here and there—“never,” “contours,” “sublime transcendence.” Pompous blowhards. No matter. He recognized the speech: recognized, remembered, knew, ignored. Their words are not Thomas’s words. The words here are not art. They do not concern art. He spat.

In a maze of winding hallways, Thomas snaked through the exhibits. Statue of David, scrotum but no rectum, constipated I’d bet. Hasn’t shat for a thousand years—friend and lover to the armless, assless Venus de Milo—fertilizer of fallow fields. He doesn’t pass like me. Thomas passed by Dave. Sling slung over the shoulder, slingslung flaccid but stony hard, iron irony—marble erected in impotence: solid, stony sloth. Replica, anyhow. Plaster marblemold. Not even that accurate. Mike’s Dave stood on a raised platform, his plaster flaking.

Mockmarble crumbling plastershell behind him, Thomas pressed on to the Monet section, taking his usual seat, expectant, staring at the center painting on the West wall. It was a piece he knew—had memorized. Hazy, sunset-shadowed parliament buildings stood motionless, trapped in a moment which craves the next. Ever approaching Night crouched on sinewy haunches, flexed to lunge, forever prepared and patient, waiting. The water which had once flowed and eddied now lay stagnant, the reflections therein unwavering. Still. But not for long. He was just in time. Back storeroom of the museum. Alone. Wall-thumping. Curator. Panting. Woman there. Breathing. Thudding. Dull. Hardbreathing. Thud. Breathless bodies beat away the minutes at the usual hour against the wall behind the painting. Hidden—virile, victorious, self-pleased—God what a curator. He’ll be finished soon. Call you? **** that. You’re fired. New secretary, same curator, same wall, same rattling Monet. Same Thomas. The future is the present is the past, that bygone mockery of progress, ever laughing.

Laughter, now static-hidden, now buzzing clearer, now hidden, finally burst in his ears, the booms of a fireworks display. Such a long time ago. Thomas was a student then, an avid learner with a passion for the arts. Going places. An old Professor smoking a pipe. Smokebillowing windwhispers — You’re going places, Thomas. Laughter. There she stood before him, Vanessa, brilliantfaced, ringing laugh sighing again. Bright and wonderful she had told him of every work the museum held; wonder-full and bright he had drunk her words. So long ago. Fondly the repartee bounced in wave and particle between them, Thomas and Vanessa, Vanessa and Thomas. They knew well their medium, with one ear silently listened to the starry night, couched in quiet awe. Vincent, mad-eyed, still-listening to his mono audio, did not know how they admired him. He had loved, they had loved, and loved she was gone, a ghost, the first phantasm flitting behind that damned Monet. First, but not last. Curator. Usurping lecher. He spat.

And now the same lecher hid behind his Monet-hanging wall. Every day Thomas watched, waited, and listened, ashamed, alone, hoping to hear the bodies beating as he remembered, but always knowing that only every third day would the painting shake—stone-writ. Penciled in by the curator; I’ll see if I can make time for you: scheduled, controlled, linear. Behind the framed painting she beds down with Procrustes. He’s protected, a son of Troy. The plaster ceiling—crumbling, flaking—dusts the marble floor. Dusting marble? Never mentioned... Who told you the floor was marble? Limestone floor, limestone pillars. I will not lie, not intentionally.

He stood, still watching the shaking masterpiece: the painting still suffering sodomy, but not stillsuffering. Nothing immobile. All eroding. Water cutting rocks. Canyons thirty-thousand years in the making. Ground stonesits motionless and indestructible, underground walls hiding sputtering, spurting streams, the siltful waters hiding nothing—only slicing into the solid rock, gouging granite gaps and crevices. Stillwatching, Tommis listened, still-listening, to the drumming against the wall. Almost finished now. Five minutes, no endurance. Way to ride, cowboy. In the last throes, the painting fell, marblelimestonefloorbreaking. The wooden prison lay splinterframed. Tommis ignored this. No frame. Unimportant. Vanessa. He listened to the last thud.

Thomas could not control. How could he when. It’s perfectly excusable that. I can’t be judged if. Why does. Done. A seed—denied, ignored, suppressed, unleashed—is sown in stony ground. Self-pleasing figures standing around him, marblemade, unfecal, infertile. Framed in preconception, unaware, or perhaps too aware, of the ever-cracking plaster-caste past, the voyeur slides into the shadows, vanishing without effort, knowing only the final spasm. He will return, not understanding his momentary fulfillment, jealous rage welling up in his heart, an endlessly unsatisfied, unwitting student walking into hurricane force wind—wind invisible and insubstantial, full of animosity and spiteful power. Full of fury it blows, hollow and empty.

A Subway Ride

Pounding the doors open, Thomas left the museum. Lions, stony, lay couchant at the gates, suffering none to pass unheeded under their granite stare. Immutable rock: dull, rough, and eternal. Thomas cringed under their stare. The sun blazed out from behind a cloud, golden-dancing on his shoulders—brilliant—and a hollow anger that slept in him stirred again to waking—yawning, vacuous—unmitigated rage pulling and twisting his organs together and apart. The saliva turned to bitter acid on his palate, and his stomach bubbled and churned and lunged in on itself, slowsucked into the surrounding vacuum of loathing. There it was, laughing in the sky: the greater orb by day. Sun, moon, stars—false idols and fabrications. He would escape it. Yes. There, the entrance to the subway. Sink now beneath the earth.

Thomas descended the stairs to the subway, steam-wisps dissipating up out of the opening in smoky-whispered silence, incense of the underground. A formless, grey-suited sea of faceless, colorless men and women flowed and ebbed with the train schedule, and Thomas dissolved into the currents. Awash in grey tides, he drifted. Waited. On a bench by a pillar, an old woman sat crying into her hands, her face contorted in lugubrious misery. Weep on, frailty. From the flow, Thomas—waiting, floating—a sliver of his wondering spurred on by imagination, watched her, that tiny fragment of another life seen from afar, gone after the briefest second—a breath of the unknown—one shining, microscopic shard seen through a fogged, foreign lens, fleshflashed and forgotten. Thomas observed her still, wondered, imagined, decided, knew. Her sons had abandoned her. No. Never. Husband? Perhaps…. No. Another man. Well! Not old, actually—probably no more than forty. Another man. Used her. Left her pregnant, alone, afraid. So long ago. Immaculate. Did Mary weep for her son? This woman did, her tears Vanessa’s tears. Another man. Used, seduced, left to womb-rotting loneliness. False smiles and liewhitened teeth mollify the weaker sex: mollify and mollify. Cycling rock-tumbler.

Trainscreech. Begin the flow. The grey sea oozed and wavered, quivering as the cars emptied—trickled—a funnel effect slowing the osmotes at the doors. One last droplet, and then. And then. The torrent, the flood, Thomas lost himself in it, scrambling to stay with the haste-spurred tumult of the tide. Bodies pressed against him, crushing the air from him, and yet he was alone. So many people. A mass. A furious swarm of locusts. Greengrey now, the sea became a cloud of buzzing, gnawing, hunger-maddened plague-bugs. Greengreylocustplague humhowling around him: peaking, crashing, tornadoswirling: particulate updownaroundeverywhere, Thomas staggered, panicblinded. Humhowling still, the swarm carried him toward the gaping, deepinhaling mouth of the train. Swallowed. To be swallowed alive! Oh, Jesus. And then if it consumes me? And then if it digests me? Makes me its own to be released upon the world ere I fragment within its churning bowels? And then. No! People. Just people. Slowly, tediously slowly, the swarm disintegrated; the greengrey air, once thick with beating locust-wings, fled on phantom winds, and the sweat beaded on Thomas’s forehead as he shook in spasmodic shivers of panic, adrenaline freezing through his veins, a cold mercury icing any pain until only alertness remained. Just people. Grey amblers traveled un-swarm toward the doors—the metal, inanimate doors. Thomas, again lucid, walked with the crowd into the car and sat, gripping a pole for support, on a poorly cushioned seat, watching the tide fill the space around him. And waited.

Trainscreech. The subway tram jolted forward, slowed, then another jolt—shakystarting to again cycle the stops of the circling tracks. Thomas sat perfectly still, watching the lighted tunnel stream by outside the car windows. Stillmoving, Thomas waited for his stop, idly watching the other passengers, seeing little out of the ordinary, numbed by comfortable normality. Until. Legless beggar. Toothless, drooling, blackgaping hole wetting his beard. Incoherent babble-moaning sirened from his mouth, the halfworded sputterings of an age-made mute. Long, knotted, grey hair fell about the man’s misshapen face, his head wobbling from side to side as he made his horrible, drycracking wail of a moan. Waking once again from its fitful, uneasy sleep, the vacuous anger returned, raw, and a bubbling, sour snake-venom stung Thomas’s mouth as he shakily ingested the image, like beggar like sun. Disgust and horror lumped cancerous in his throat—malignant—and his intestines shriveled into dusty nausea. Legless, rolling himself around on a four-wheeled, plywood board, the beggar made his way up the car. Made his way toward Thomas, who, wishing beyond wanting, beyond even needing, to escape before the filth-ridden man could reach him, glanced in desperation at the route map. Here’s the stop before mine. Tell the next by the last. Still-looking back towards the beggar, Thomas began sweating again, wringing his hands in nervous terror.

Perhaps that beggar managed to reach him. Perhaps they even spoke. No matter. There’s no sense in a dialogue, it slows the motion, and one does not wish to go in reverse. Yes, seeing him crucified by his infirmity will suffice. No. Thomas saw the man mock-crucified—a sacrilege. That which is unholy could not be made whole, and, like the beggar, Thomas knew himself wholly unholy. Knew. A crumbling, grey steeple, festering with mold. Holy. He spat.

Trainscreech. Sideways scuffleshuffling, Thomas shoved against the faceless grey out into the station, still spitting the sour sting from his mouth. Pressing, crushing, the beggar! Out! He shot from the train, fighting his way through the crowd. The beggar’s grotesque visage seared his mind’s eye, and Thomas saw nothing. That dry-wailing howl rang in his ears, and he was deaf. Staggering, blinded, Thomas clawed through the crowd, choking and desperate for air. Suffocating! His body lashed forward with a violent shudder; the acid-burning on his palate conquering all other senses, he doubled over and vomited. Again. His body seized and shook as he regurgitated everything within him, while a crowd gathered greymass around him, keeping their distance—amazed, concerned, horrified, enthralled. Again. Again. At last a retch whipcracked his body so violently that he dropped to the ground, dry heaving. Blood oozed from the corners of his twisting mouth as he lay convulsing in puddled putrescence. Purgation. The beggar was gone from Thomas’s mind, though hunger had taken his place. Ravenous and violent, it tore at him. So it is. Expulsion, replacement. Statue of David. Defecation, regurgitation. Whichever. Whole. Ingestions and digestions to be released on the world in the manner we see fit.

And so, with the mark of his digestions scrawled on the subway station floor, Thomas stood, his head bowed and tiredsagging. Exhaustion now coupled with his hunger, and together they writhed and copulated, a dangerous romance. Better than nausea. Thomas, sweatshaking but satisfied, slowmade his way to the stairs. He ascended, leaving the city’s subterranean, circular frame behind him. As it began, so would it end: dust to dust, stairs to stairs, home to museum to home.

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 watched as it sat on the table—watched it ripple and shimmer. A slip of the hand and it fell to the ground, marblelinoleumfloorshattering…

I should mop it up--soak up this dust-congealing liquid. No sense in water without its being pristine. Very well, then. Remove this greygelatinous mass. A brief pause from my narrative while I utilize my mother's mop. How many times, how many times I've done so. On to the mop.

Perhaps I should dust as well, to prevent any tainted water in the future. No. There will always be dust. Unto dust thou shalt return, each day of your life, wallowing in dull, dead flakes of skin. It's sickening. All this filth--corrupt, twisted, false. On a lush hill, the shining temple of the Word of God rots from termites and age--a feast for the ravenous serpent, who crawls on his belly and consumes the only true eternal.

But he did not always crawl, devouring dirty dust. Before his curse, infinite eons had been spent conversing with God. With God! Infallible, smooth, liquidity flowed in the Word, in the beginning. Soundless, spherical utterances issued from the divine mouth. And then. And then the serpent whissperwound his venom into the world. Descended to Eve, that she should hear his hushed hissing. He touched the dust with his tongue, that he should make dust when it came time to speak of it, as it was, had been, would be, with God. But when he spoke of dust, it did not appear. Echoing the serpent's sound, Eve sinned with Adam. Down to their bellies they fell; the ground split asunder, and the wrath of God thundered upon them. They reeled in misery and shame, their faces hidden in the dirt. Adam lost the names which through God he had given all things. With a cracked voice, he slowly spoke new names at them, as the serpent had named the dust. The sounds leaving his lips in shrieking spittleflicks.

What foolishness this story harbors! All this and that about David or the Tower of Babel. My mother always like the beginning, though, quoting John 1:1 whenever she had the chance. There was a time when I, too, embraced it. So long ago, when the laughter meant so much. When those simple, ringing sounds rang as true as the silent, silver ocean of God's own Word. So long ago. And then? And then. And now? I don't know--and then as well, I suppose.

No. Know. And now, and then. Another man. Consumption and regurgitation. The subway. The museum. The Curator, though his schedule told him otherwise. Dust. I cannot write so quickly as I must. My mind flashes these images before me and I understand. How foolish I was to have missed them, distorting my sight no better than the Curator with his little black book! Painting frames and water glasses splintershatter in my mind, but I am yet beginning. I must leave my mother's house, though I know it will always darken my mind to the light--to the sun. Good. The red sun still shines on a school of herring, but does it not help me to see? Very well. I shall let it be dimmed; it is not the sun I seek. I know where it can be found, and I will use its mild light to guide my step. The sun, thank the Father! The beggar, thank the Son! But I am not satisfied rejoicing in inevitability. I must go now; I must understand. Goodbye mother, goodbye Vanessa, goodbye Serpent. Hello and goodbye sound in unison in my ears. I do not understand, I cannot understand, I will not understand, I must try to understand. In the beginning was the Word, but the Word was not God. The Word will never be God; neither will it be Devil. And yet it is both.

My eyes are but a child's eyes, my mind a child's mind. I see what I know I will see, and I assume what I know is the truth. Qu'est-ce que c'est ca, la verite? Est-ce qu'il y a une verite? Probablement pas. Mais non. La verite c'est ca: il y a les mots, et il y a les objets. D'accord, c'est a la verite que je commence mes journees. But they are not simply my own travels, he, too, wishes to leave this house. He journeys through me, directing my path--guiding me that he should guide himself.

Je danse parce-que la realizateur veux que je danse, mais il aussi voit seulement un petit peu du monde. ???????????????????????????????We will not understand. Nous ne comprennons jamais. ???????I must leave my mother's home. Il faut que je quitte la maison de ma mere. ?????

Nous sommes les enfants. Cruel, twisted in innocence, children flail in their nightmared sleep, propelled by a moving sidewalk. One day we will wake. I am off. I leave this behind, though I never truly can. I will try to understand, even though I cannot. He will try to understand, even though he cannot. And then?

And then.

*head explodes*

Originally Posted by: earthman buck*head explodes*

HA!

That'll show ya.

Je pense que c'est mieux comme "Ill faut que je ...", pas "Il est indispensable que je ...".

Personne ne parlent comme ca; sauf Thomas? :p

Originally Posted by: LordathestringsJe pense que c'est mieux comme "Ill faut que je ...", pas "Il est indispensable que je ...".

Personne ne parlent comme ca; sauf Thomas? :p

D'accord, I will change the offending line.

Nicely done Jolly!

You already know how impressed I am by your talent and this story just cements that thought. I have to admit I had to read it through several times and I am not sure I picked up everything in it but it still wowed me. Your writing is very dense and compact. Terrific (horrid and beautiful at the same time) images throughout.

We have different styles but I can certainly appreciate someone who can write in post-modern style with such ease. That's a real gift you've got there.

Like I said before, Thomas is a bitter and twisted man. At least that's how I saw him. Nicely drawn character.

Let us know where it will be published. If it were mine, I would send it outside of the school literary magazine. Get your submissions started now. Let us know where they are going to publish so all of your GT buds can go out and buy a copy.

Just so you know, I want an autograph! :D

I'd actually call it Modern. It's a little more hopeful than post-modernism. And a little more allusory and pretentious (though I don't mean to be the latter, haha!)

Also, thanks so much man! Your compliments definitely do help me plod on with it.

Originally Posted by: hunter60Just so you know, I want an autograph! :D

[FONT=Garamond]Jolly McJollyson[/FONT]

I'm drunk. Hooray! Bump!

Originally Posted by: earthman buck*head explodes*

Pops down the pub for a pint and thinks " What was that all about "

Originally Posted by: Jolly McJollysonI'm drunk. Hooray! Bump!

Perhaps the greatest post EVER! :D

Originally Posted by: hunter60Perhaps the greatest post EVER! :D

Hahaha! Wow, last night was insane.

"art for art’s sake is not art, art for one’s own sake is not art, art for others is not art, divine sublimity for the sake of creation: that is art."

beautiful *tear*

Originally Posted by: pure"art for art’s sake is not art, art for one’s own sake is not art, art for others is not art, divine sublimity for the sake of creation: that is art."

beautiful *tear*

I dunno how to break this to you, but that paragraph is really really negative and sarcastic about that sentence.