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Septimius Severus · Postby **Septimius Severus** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 6:14 am

The first bit of an old tale. I'd felt like I'd panted myself into a corner with this one for a long time, and then I read Fight Club. I've known Jones for years. It's just that now I've found a way to tell his story. Theres no creative license like amnesia. Im a new man-- a clean slate. Im ready to start all over. I can be whoever I rant to be, At least from my point of view. To everyone else, Im still the same old fuckup Ive always been; only I dont have the benefit of fuckup experience. This is a great setup for drama. Too bad everyones done it before. I prefer comedy. You can call me Ishmael. Im partial to Jones. People always ask me what the last thing I remember is. I say, right now. The last thing anyone remembers is what just happened. I dont know what the first thing I remember is. Thing is, I cant tell what I remember anymore. I think it has to do with the crack on my ceiling. When the lowest bid is a negative sum, you cant expect stellar performance. Its midnight. Actually, I have no way of knowing the time, but it ought to be midnight. Im lying there and Im not moving. I cant move and I wouldnt if I could. These kind of mattresses, you can just hose them down. Great when you expect things to get messy. Thing is, plastic sticks to skin. You stay still and youre warm. Move and youre freezing. This isnt the Hilton. My chest is heavy. Its like Im wearing that lead vest the dentist gives you so you think you wont get cancer, even though youve got a bugs bunny x-ray gun pointed at your head. Drool too much, or bite his finger, and he makes sure you never have kids. Ive got that dentist taste in my mouth, too. Its the rotten shit that comes out when they drill a cavity. All the food youve eaten for years, its in there. Garlic and pepper and liverwurst and coffee. Rotted eggs. Cattle that died four years ago. French fries from the Clinton administration. Mummified baloney. When its so vile and awful and all you want to do is scream but you cant do anything because youre lying there in the dark and you cant wiggle your toes. This is a clerical error. I should be on drugs. The kind they dilute in your IV bag and you dont feel a thing. You might as well be dead for all the brainpower youre using. Horse tranquilizers. Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. Happy juice. But someone forgets to top off my tank and now theyre stuck with me. Sometimes the best thing to do with something you dont understand is ignore it. Eyes shut, and the world is gone. So I go to sleep. And this is the first thing I remember. *** When you wake up in the morning, the last thing you want is to run. The next thing I remember, Im staring at that shitty masonry again. I know the whole building is going to fall down on me, and Ill still be too bored to care. Rescue dogs will sniff me out in the rubble, and I wont bother to let anyone know Im alive. This is what it means to be brainwashed. I open my eyes, and I start working before I can think. I get out of bed and brush my teeth and shave. Shaving your face does more than make you look clean. It actually helps keep you clean. So long as you dont cut yourself, shaving keeps you healthy. My head is clean, and I put on my clothes. Its just black running shoes, blue trousers, white T-shirt, and a blue jacket. Machine-washable durable sensible clothes. It makes sense to wear this stuff. Thats why everyone here does it. Now theres a green light over my door, and it lights up. Theres a buzzer. No surprise. I stand in my open doorway. This guy in gray clothes just like mine comes up and looks at my eyes with a flashlight. He takes my pulse. He sticks his rubber gloves in my mouth and explores my cheeks a bit. He writes something on a notepad, and he goes to the next door over. Theres another joker in a blue suit there, and another next to him, and another again. I never counted, but there must have been 50 doors just like mine leading to cells just like mine with green lights just like mine and rusty sinks and sticky mattresses and crumbling walls just like mine. Theres a bell, and we all get out of our little abodes and follow each other two-by-two down the hall and out the end doors. We form up into a little block, and hear what were doing today. So were digging a trench. Well get tools. Im standing there, and Im thinking. Thats just it, Im thinking. Im thinking why the hell is this so familiar if I havent done it before. Im thinking how do I know that I have a sewn-on nametag when I dont know what it says. Im thinking holy shit, I hope no one notices me thinking. Thing about manual labor you dont know if you havent done it is, it sucks. The guy in front of me is breaking up the dirt with a grubbing hoe, and Im scooping it up and throwing it into a pile outside the stakes we have set up. Im here wishing I was in front doing the glamorous stuff rather than cleaning up after this clown. Im having to dig rather than just scoop because hes no good at his job and he doesnt know what hes doing. He just hacks randomly at the dirt for a while, then moves forward. If I were doing it, itd be art. People would stop and watch my deft moves. Then again, maybe its best I dont do anything impressive. No one else seems too concerned with the quality of their work. I dont know why Im digging, but I know why Im not digging too fast. There are no go-getters in a gulag.

Burning Sheep Productions · Postby **Burning Sheep Productions** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 12:51 pm

How... insanely... odd...

Ozymandias · Postby **Ozymandias** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 10:34 pm

When I get some free time, I'll read this. Promise.

Ankaris · Postby **Ankaris** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 5:50 am

How very very Fight Club-y <img src='http://definecynical.mancubus.net/forum ... /smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /> I like it!

Septimius Severus · Postby **Septimius Severus** » Mon Nov 01, 2004 12:33 am

*** So my plan. Maybe it wasnt genius. Maybe I didnt have a plan at all. Maybe I was just stupid. Whatever; if its stupid, and it works. . . Ive been working a long time and the sun is getting pale. Theres this guy in tan clothes just like mine, and hes got a shotgun. And theres this other guy in gray clothes just like mine and hes sitting on his ass reading a newspaper. Everyone else is in blue clothes. Just like mine. Well, the guy in front of me, the one who digs like a Ritalin-deprived Chihuahua, he falls down and starts freaking out. This is no place to have a seizure, you idiot. The tan guy comes over and slings his shotgun back on his shoulder. Hes bending over seizure boy and you know hes thinking, holy shit, what do I do now? I look back and the gray man is now talking on his cell phone. The guard is distracted by a sick inmate. The warden is a dumbass. Alcatraz this isnt. Call it inspiration. I hit him with my shovel and ran away. Freedom. Liberty. Self-determination. Thing about rubber bullets. They hurt like hell. *** Im back at home and a televisions on. It has to be one of those political shows on CNN. I hate waking up like this. Some asshole turns the volume up just to where you cant ignore it, but just low enough you cant tell what theyre saying. All you hear is ehh-ba-aw-ba-blaw-ba-keh-ba-do-laka And then a higher pitched voice is all Weh-heo-hef-ken-awba-ka-lala-pak-uh Its Chinese water torture on your ear drums, and all you want to do is sleep, but the only way to do that is to stop the sound, and the only way to do that is get up and beat the shit out of the guy watching the tube. By then you know youll be too pissed off to sleep. So you get up, and now you really want to fight. So maybe it isnt the TV. Im in this hospital bed and theres people talking outside the door. I start to get up and my nerves inform me that I have an IV in my right arm. Looking at the bruising, I didnt have the best nurse in the world. That, or Im hard to hold down. Well, at least now my arm matches the rest of me. I pull back the collar of my robe and Im dogmeat. Doesnt feel too bad, considering. Well, no use sitting around waiting for the botulism in the food to kill me. First order of business, where the hell am I? Theres a window. Thats a start. No TV, though. I take off the tube and start pulling out the needle. Ouch. Im not much of a nurse, myself, but somehow what you do to yourself hurts way less than when someone else does it. Outside the window, theres a city. A large city. Great, Ive narrowed it down to what, 300 places on earth? I am awesome. No matter, whatevers out there is better than where I was. Or where I am. Wherever that is. I know theres got to be a guard outside my door. Probably some fat chump in a faux-police uniform with cheet-oh crumbs all over his tie reading a playboy. Or maybe its this big black man in a black suit with a black tie and sunglasses on inside with a little earpiece that looks like a hearing aid. Better yet, its this skinny Italian with a pinched face in a greasy jumpsuit and hes swinging this baseball bat imagining bashing my head in the first excuse he gets. Well, if I dont want Lenny to get the chance to up his RBI, Id better find a way out. I look out the window again. Im on the sixth or seventh story, and there arent any ledges. Theres no awning down at the bottom to break my fall before I land comically in a fruit vendors wagon. If theres a garbage chute, its in the hallway. Besides, I dont want to risk it if the thing goes straight to a furnace. Or just straight down. Besides, Im not sure I want to be anywhere near hospital waste. So its the front door. I am Buck Rogers. Ill disable the guard, steal his uniform, and leave the hospital unnoticed. I get up to the door, and I feel awful foolish, barefoot in that stupid draughty bedsheet they give you to wear. I do a turkey peek around the corner and theres no one there. No security guard. No mafioso. No beautiful nurse to aid my escape and become a love interest. This isnt the twenty-seventh century. Maybe hes in the can. Well, my clothes are all folded and clean on a table near the door. Lucky thing they have quick laundry service here. I put on my clothes like everyone elses and go to the elevator. What the hell. I press L. The elevator is big and wide to allow for those roller beds. They have muzak playing. It used to be Barry White. Theres no stop until I get to the ground floor. Instantly, I am ready for action. No one looks at me. No guards shouting. No alarms. No one gives a rats ass that that this fugitive is on the loose, ready to start doing whatever it is I was doing in the first place all over again. Im at large. Free to start a new reign of terror. Im ready to take on my captors, and begin anew. Im completely broke. I need a job.

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