Tag Archives: writing

Feb 20 2012
16 Comments
Fiction, Three minute read

Old Man in Captain Hat Talks About Tunnels

please ignore resemblance to an anus.

The following is fictional. I just wanted to write something about crawling through a tunnel.

It’s Wednesday night and I’m at O’Leary’s again. The best thing about this place is that the dim lighting covers up the filth and makes makes people look more interesting than they actually are.   As I finish my beer, I remember once again that I’m drinking alone.  I slap six dollars on the bar and reach for my jacket. From behind me I suddenly hear someone whisper.

“Psss….”

I turn around and out of nowhere there’s an old dude sitting right there with a wonky eye and a captain’s hat. How had I not seen him before?

“Yeah?” I say, wondering what he wants. Had I dropped something?

“You ever go through a tunnel?” the captain growls.

“What?” I said. This was beginning to be a little strange.

“I said, ‘You ever get on your elbows and knees, down in the dirt and the grime, and crawl into the darkness, not sure if you gonna see the light again, and make your way like a worm through the belly of the earth?”

“Well…..”

“Do you know what it’s like? You’re down there, in the endless shadow, and you’re alone. All you see is a spit of dirt in front of you where your flashlight shine from your mouth, one inch above you is the earth, and beneath you is the earth. You got nowhere to go but forward or back. The earth is swallowing you up. You just a few sorry square feet of matter down there, with all that earth about you. And you know in one second you could be gone.”

I’m not sure how to respond…I don’t feel that uncomfortable because he doesn’t even seem to be talking to me. Would he notice if I left? But then he goes on, apparently lost in a memory.

“And it don’t matter how good you are. Once you’re down there, the panic’s gonna come. You’re going to be halfway to the center of the earth, wiggling your bottom like a popstar, and sooner or later it’s going to hit you. Maybe after five minutes, maybe after an hour. It don’t matter none. You’re gonna wanna see the light. You’re gonna wanna stand up and shout out and see the sun and know life’s got meaning again because down in the darkness you don’t know what’s real. You’re gonna wanna smell a woman’s hair again, gonna wonder about your friends and family, if you got them, and more than anything, you’re gonna want space. But there ain’t no space. Not in the tunnel. And the more you think about it, the more unbearable the tunnel gets, till it seems it’s closing in on you, lowering itself little by little, trying to squish you out of existence. You can’t see nothing ahead of you, just more tunnel. You feel it’s never going to end and for a moment, you know you’d rather die than be in the tunnel for another second, where you can’t move, can’t breathe hardly, can’t hear anything besides your own scared breaths, touch anything besides dirt. And then you know that you’ve already died and you’re in hell itself. The tunnel becomes your hell, a personal hell. And you know you can’t go on, that you’re going to stay there in your dark, dirty hell and die the death of an animal. Your world is so small…so small….”

I just stare at him for a second while he looks past me. Do I say anything? Do I try to reassure him and tell him it’s okay? But once again he continues with no verbal notification from me.

“So after 25 years, I finally got me this captain’s hat and became a Christian.”

A few hours later, I realized my wallet, ring, and watch were gone.

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Feb 17 2012
15 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Three minute read

I’m Using Someone Else’s Toothbrush

Who is using my toothbrush now?

Warning: This is bizarre.

It starts out just like a regular tooth brushing session. Wearing socks, I step into the bathroom and turn towards the mirror. For roughly a minute, I examine my face for new developments, leaning as close to my reflection as possible. Finding everything accounted for, I stand back up and reach for my toothbrush. I wet it, squeeze toothpaste onto it, open my mouth wide, and then set it against my right lower molars. The brushing begins.

And then it happens. I am suddenly and completely convinced that the toothbrush I’m using is not my own. It’s someone else’s. I’m using someone else’s toothbrush. Who is it? What if they find out? What if it’s my roommate’s and she walks by and sees me because I don’t shut the door when I’m just brushing my teeth? Would she be mad at me? Would she say nothing, walk away, and then leave a note by the sink asking me not to use her toothbrush. Would she bring it up

over dinner and say “Hey, you can totally use my toothbrush, but just make sure you ask me beforehand.” or would it be more like a roundabout story of how in her family, everyone always used their own toothbrushes and she guesses it’s just a personal thing but could I please not use her toothbrush anymore? Would she start taking her toothbrush out of the bathroom and shutting it in her nightstand? What if I went into her room and took it out of her nightstand and she saw me using it again? Would she ask me to move out or would it turn into a kind of game where she hides her toothbrush around the apartment and I keep on trying to find it? Would she ask me pointblank when she saw me with my toothbrush in her mouth, “Are you using my toothbrush?” And what would I say? “Oh I thought it was mine?” Is that even true? Am I some kind of psychopath that lies about my brushing habits, but not in the usual, “Sure, Dentist, I brush and floss two to three times a day,” but in a “Oh that’s so weird I completely thought it was mine” even though I doubted it was mine but went ahead and brushed my teeth anyways. And how can I even doubt whether or not the toothbrush was mine unless our toothbrushes look exactly the same, but mine and hers don’t because hers is blue and mine is white so I have no excuse but still I find myself wondering whether or not I’m using the right toothbrush? What does that say about me?

So there I am, alternately staring in the mirror at myself  and at the toothbrush, and I have the distinct and unmistakable feeling I’m using the toothbrush of a stranger. I feel this even though I know for a fact the toothbrush is mine. I can see my roommate’s toothbrush in the blue glass that also holds our identical toothpastes, but we don’t care about the toothpastes because apparently those are fine and socially acceptable to interchange. But if you interchange toothbrushes, that’s just weird.

Is it because the bristles of a toothbrush explore the most intimate nooks of one’s oral cavity, massaging the crevices of one’s chompers and their gummy nest, inserting itself in all those places where the day’s gluttony lingers, shooing bits of taffy and apple peel out of their hiding places, scrubbing the tongue down including that part in the back that looks weird and kind of hairy because of the taste buds? Is it because of all of that?

Though I know for a fact the toothbrush I hold is my own, the doubt still plagues me. I miss my old toothbrush, the one I lost about a week ago. It was green and awkwardly sized in the fashion of a big crayon, but I had gotten to know it over the course of many brushings and felt I had reached a special place with it. But now it’s gone. And in its place is this cold piece of plastic that doesn’t understand me and doesn’t even seem to care. Maybe my roommate’s toothbrush would be nicer to use after all. Would she care if I did use it, just a few times, just until I got to know my new toothbrush better?

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Feb 09 2012
4 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Stories

The Sun: Worth Remembering

Gah! The sun! Hissssss!

Well I’ve really gone and done it now. I spent too much time inside and forgot what the sun looked like. My mom told me this would happen but I didn’t believe her. I never believed her.

She always said, “Emily, make sure you go outside so you can remember the sun. You can brush your scales off out there and smell the air with your tongue and slither around for a bit. Don’t stay in that cave all the time! Once you forget the sun, it’s hard to get used to the light again.”

I would hiss at her, “Leave me alone!” And I didn’t listen to her, even though I knew better.

I didn’t think I’d been inside for that long when I woke up one morning and saw a hideous substance pouring in through the crack between my curtains.  The stuff was garishly bright and I had no idea where it was coming from. I wanted to make it go away but was afraid of getting it all over me. It made me uncomfortably warm.

When I got up to shut the curtains and complete the darkness, I accidentally tripped and fell because I apparently hadn’t used my legs in a long time. While scrambling for support on my way down, I ripped the curtain from the wall and was blinded by a great BALL OF FIRE leeching heat right through the glass. And I thought:

GOOD GOD WHAT IS THAT THING?

As I lay on the ground, painful memories came rushing back to me. I had seen this monstrosity before, been hurt by it before. Endless peeling of scarlet flesh, droplets of sweat stinging my eyes, days lasting eternities. How could I have forgotten? This abomination was the sun, the enemy, its penetrating light revealing all. What horror.

I was on the brink of despair. Then other memories flooded my mind, pleasant ones. I remembered sitting in a warm armchair and watching yellow rays dancing through tree leaves all speckled like. The sun slipping below the horizon and making the clouds neon. The golden hours of spring days when everything is beautiful. Those were pretty. Maybe the sun wasn’t all bad.

Strange how I could forget something that caused me so much pain and joy. I need to slither outside more, but first I need to take a good long nap.

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Jan 29 2012
4 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Three minute read

Captain’s Log: Return to Cairo

A fire roars in the captain’s quarters

I could do an obligatory post about returning to Egypt and re-falling in love with Cairo, but I saw a bare-assed man taking a dump this morning while walking back to my apartment, so I decided to delete that chapter of my return story.

Instead, I will tell a dark tale of hardware and how the fates conspired to make an Arabic student computer-less for an entire four days. This is my story. Some details have been altered to make it more interesting.

The Captain’s Log

“I’m pretty sure I left my converter at my apartment in Cairo.” I thought to myself while steering the Seamstress down a canal in Amsterdam. “Why would I take it to America? I don’t need it there.”

“Drevets!” the skipper yelled, “Let’s rope it up! Them tourists gettin’ more annoying by the second. I cain’t stand them much longer.”

“Right-O, skipper.” I said, “We’re here anyways. The pancake girls will be down soon with our snacks and then we can eat and get out of here. You know, I’ve got a lot on my mind nowadays, what with the winds and the endless darkness. Say, do ever remember me mentioning a converter, like for electronics?”

“No ma’am, captain. I ain’t never seen nothin’ of the sort.”

“Okay. Thanks, skipper. Well I guess we should get a move on, shouldn’t we.”

Later that evening, as I rested in the captain’s quarters at the Hilton Hotel Amsterdam, nursing a glass of whiskey with the hotel dog curled at my feet, the converter still occupied my mind. What had I done with it? Could I have left it in America?

My computer’s battery was not going to last long. I had already used it to help navigate the canals, since the last time I sailed those waterways was thirty years and a universe ago. Those were different times back then, different dreams. I sighed and took a sip of whisky. It was a long time ago.

I boarded the captain’s plane the next day feeling hopeful. I was, after all, a rational person. I was a ship captain, for God’s sake! They don’t just give anyone these puffy captain’s bloomers and special caps. The converter was in my captain’s apartment back in Cairo. It had to be. I was sure of it. My computer was functionally dead by now, and the prospect of a delayed revival chilled me to the bone, more threatening than the winter winds of Amsterdam.

I arrived in Cairo, was enveloped by its cloud and dusty musk. Taxi-ing across the city towards my captain’s apartment, I waited and hoped.

The taxi stopped. Five flights of stairs were climbed. A door was opened. Another door was opened. A light switch was turned on. A converter was not found.

It is not here.

It is not here.

It is not here.

The words echoed in my mind’s blackness.

I saw but did not see. I heard but did not hear. My computer stared at me, mute, a dumb beast. A light flashed on the router, the internet’s waves flowing through me. Yet I was cut off from the life blood. I exhaled slowly. “ ‘Captain’s Log: Return to Cairo’ will have to wait,” I said to myself, and I was completely alone.

End

Postscript: I bought a converter a few days later and it cost less than one dollar so I fully expect it to blow up and/or melt but, on the other hand, I have internet. Sweet, sweet internet.

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Jan 14 2012
4 Comments
Anecdotes, One minute read, Travelling

Another Okie Heading West

As I stood on top of one of the Twin Peaks and looked out over the bright city of San Francisco and into the bay beyond with its rust colored Golden Gate Bridge and the lumpy green mountains beyond that, and looked behind me and saw the setting sun and its reflection in the water so it looked like two suns, and glanced down and saw my lengthening shadow on the earth, and felt the coolness coming from the trees, and considered all the combinations of colors of green and blue and brown and bright that lay before me, I thought to myself that there is no other city I have found in this earth that has such a high concentration of everything I love. Creativity, nature, color, coffee, books, floral dresses, and sidewalks all combined and laid out on a grid set between hills on a peninsula in the bay.

And then I thought that I would like to live in California, if it would have me, and especially if it would find me a place to live and pay my bills. But those might have to be personal journeys. I would make the effort, though. It would be worth it to live here.

Here I come, just another liberal arts graduate with a job in retail.

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