Running Late

I was running late for guard duty, which rarely ever happens.  As I was rushing around trying to get ready, I could somehow hear the chatter between the other guards at work on the radio.  The guard I was to relieve at my post was moaning about the futility of his existence and going on about what a bastard I was for leaving him stuck there and so on.  Meanwhile, I was having my own problems.  I kept trying to put on my guard uniform, but every time I looked down I found that I had put on my normal jeans and t-shirt, and I had to start the process all over again.

Finally, I thought I had it right so I was off to work.  By that time it was getting light out, and I found myself reporting to a park in the early morning hours.  I headed for the guard shack on the premises, but a supervisor caught me on the dirt path.  He took me over to a shaded area where the management were all waiting around a cluster of picnic tables.  First they reprimanded me for being out of uniform, and it was then that I noticed that I was still just wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.  On top of that, they told me that the shirt was ugly, which seemed unnecessary.  Then they made me watch some kind of training film right there at the bench.  I tried to go, but I knocked over the projector as I was getting up.  They told me that the film stock was very old and fragile, and that in damaging it I had released dangerous chemicals into the air that would probably give us all cancer.  I wasn't exactly having the best morning.

From the Outside

I had a nice old colonial house that sat in a clearing with clusters of weeds growing around the foundation, but for some reason I always slept on a straw mat laid out on the front lawn, curled up in a wool blanket that had gathered thistles and thorns.  There was something appealing about forsaking the shelter of the house in exchange for being out in the open air, under the stars, exposed to the elements, and all just mere feet from my door.

One morning I awoke to find a small group of people gaping in at the windows at the corner of the house beside the front door.  I wasn't bothered at all by the impropriety.  I just rubbed my eyes and crawled out from under my blankets.  I heard them complimenting the rustic furnishings, the carvings on the wood, the inviting comfort of the interior.  There was a desk there beneath the windows, nested in the little nook at the foot of the stairs.  There were wooden figurines scattered on the desk, their fine details painted to various degrees with a toothpick and a set of acrylic paints.  A magnifying glass on a metal crane shined a light down on this cluttered work space.

I fell in along the back of this clustered group, almost impersonally partaking in their gaping admiration of my house's charming interior.  But I knew I was going to have to tell them the truth.  I wasn't responsible for any of it.  The previous occupant had done all of that.  All I had ever done was hang some paintings on the walls.

Decomposition

My friends had a son that really loved video games.  They had a little area set up over in the corner of the room with a small TV and some shelves to keep all of his games on.  The kid would spend hours sitting over there on the floor playing his games.  He spent so much time over there, in fact, that his parents didn't notice for quite some time that he had died sitting there facing the screen.

He sat there for several weeks, rotting away. His skin began to turn green.  The features of his face began to droop and run and flake and even ooze off everywhere in a very unsightly manner.  Flies had even begun to buzz about him, settling unperturbed on his arms and the back of his neck.  The game controller lay loose in his hands and the bones of his fingers and knuckles were starting to show through where the flesh had rotted off.

Finally his father stopped by to give the kid's head an affectionate tousle.  This caused the boy's jaw to unhinge and fall to the floor in front of him.  As the father pulled his hand back loose clumps of hair came with it and the body pitched forward limply.  At that point, I imagine he began to suspect that something might be wrong.

Chemicals of War

My friend and I were discussing World War I, and it was as if we were right there, witnessing it all first hand.  We stood on a high hill where we had a view of the whole battlefield of Europe laid out before us, the soldiers all digging row upon row of those endless trenches beneath the broiling late afternoon sun, making all the vast preparations for war.  My friend nudged me and told me that the army issued many of these soldiers such substandard equipment that often times they ended up being exposed and dying from the gas themselves as they were releasing it on the enemy.

As I considered this unpleasant piece of information, I found myself in a dark place, lost amid piles of skulls and bones piled higher than I could strain my neck to see, piles high enough to block out the light and the sun.  I could hear the awful rasping rattle of someone's dying breath, all sick and muffled.  I turned and saw a gas mask staring out at me from one of the piles, the eyes black and empty.

I knew that the gas had been released in the air.  I tried to hold my breath and run.  But I just kept hearing that rattle, right over my shoulder, right at my ear, dogging my heels.  I kept seeing those black-eyed masks staring out at me from every pile.  I ran on and on, but there were just more and more piles, and I knew I'd never make it.  I'd never escape the gas before my lungs gave out and I'd be forced to take a breath.

Storybook Illustration

I opened this children's book to a random page and there was a colorful drawing of a girl climbing over the fence of an amusement park that sat beside a small lake.  The wooden fence meandered along the shore to the spot where she climbed in the foreground; the Ferris wheel there, spinning off the edge of the page.  In the background, amongst all of the other rides, there was a huge animatronic dinosaur tethered with ropes or wires.  The text in the bottom corner explained the scene.  It said that the girl was fighting some monster and she recalled seeing the same creature in that theme park many years ago.

I was more fascinated by the picture, however.  I felt like I could stare at it for hours, like a childhood memory, the endless details of the park and the rides, the games and concessions, the people gaping at the towering toy dinosaur, holding cotton candy and pointing up with their free hands, the watercolor lake tapering off into yellow paper nothingness, the pastel boats floating aimlessly.  I felt like I was poised at the edge of an adventure or closing the book at the end of a long rainy day.