In a hungered frenzy he lay upon a rock and dreamt. Steven dreamt of reality.
“What say you, council?” Said the Judge.
The council had reconvened. A stiff breeze across the plain failed to tussle their powdered wigs. They took a seat, the semi-circular table looking out of place under the sky, out in the open.
“We find,” began Jeremiah Torchwick, longtime friend of dear Steven—recently turned nemesis. “Steven St. Murphy, you are found guilty of murder. Bloody, shitty, nasty murder. Never has this council ever convened under such an onus. Never has this council…never, god, never will we,” and then Jeremiah started to cry.
The judge regarded Steven, gagged and bound in all white, sitting upon the accused’ chair with a druggy look in his eyes. At this moment Steven was playing a song in his head,
“Now you're grown, so grown, now I must say more than ever.
Go Toora Loora Toora Loo-Rye-Aye
and we can sing just like our fathers.”
“Cum on Eileen,” Steven whispered into his mouth-gag. His bobbling head was mistaken for a personal reaction to his severe indictment.
“You, murderer, are sentenced to one of two fates.” The Judge was interrupted,
“YOU COWARD. YOU FUCKING COWARD.” It was her sister. The people sitting cross-legged all around looked, and a few got up and took her away.
“See how you have aroused anger in our breasts!” Said the Judge. “You may either suffer exile or death.” And then he banged his walking stick loudly upon the table.
“Give me death.” Said Steven, who immediately took an errant rock to the head. Dim screeching came from far behind him—Ella Emma, Lucille’s sister, had apparently not been removed far enough from the proceedings.
The Judge and the Council had a quick whispering amongst themselves. No one had ever been executed in this commune.
(Although the Council, Judge, and surrounding witnesses had never legally killed a man, nor had their fathers, nor their father’s fathers, it would be improper to leave one with the impression that these were moral people. Indeed, much rambunctiousness had precluded the history placed before this trial. Steven’s father had been responsible for the whimsical schism of exactly five marriages with his “I’m-a-comin-to-rape-ya” comedy routine; in which he got up on the town bar and cracked jokes about a random couple in the community, and at every punchline punctuated his hilarity with a cackling of “but it don’t matter coz I’m-a-comin-to-rape-ya!” Furthermore Clarence the baker was having an affair with his Asiago-Garlic loaves and Belinda Montgomery couldn’t stop blowing things up. Aaron Darrow, the town doctor, frequently administered analgesics in twos--one for the doctor, and Silver Sam the Banker never let anyone know he melted down the town’s treasury into golden bullets so that he could go off and hunt vampires. Also, Melinda Farnsworth was constantly, constantly thinking about pussy.)
“You will be exiled!” Said the Judge. “But first you will have the everloving shit beaten out of you.” And at someone kicked over Steven’s chair and started beating him.
Hours later he was out on the desert, under the leaden sky, thinking about Lucille. He dreamt of his sentence.
Moments before he was hauled out of town, David the magician had stopped the mob and put something in Steven’s pocket, and then patted Steven on the shoulder as if to say “go ahead, mob, haul him out.” Which they did.
When Steven looked into his pocket he found a bean. It started to hop away.
It was a Mexican jumping bean.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_jumping_bean)
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
37. Family Members
The wind in the night on the grass in front of the porch lit by candles. Cicadas chirped and life rustled in the woods and inside Steven's brain went off a delightful spectrum of fireworks.
"You know, a horrible man and the devil may be layered over one another," said Steven's father on the porch, "and the difference," he spat "negligible."
"Negligible at best, paw!" Said Steven.
"Shut up, boy." Father chucked a stone at Steven's head, prompting the errant youngster to resume looking forward again.
In the distance Steven had a brother. He was out in those dark woods, presumably lost. Further into the thick of the dark and into the lights of the city Steven had another brother who by all accounts had died. In outer space dwelt Steven's celestial father.
Steven remembered his mother, she had taken short leave to pursue a flimsy string of clues out in the American Southwest leading to her brother, Axelrod Buttertable, Steven's uncle.
He recalled:
Walking through the dilapidated house, shit and dust and objects askance. He had heard his mother's buzzer, he had been summoned into her spic-and-span office. The lacquered cherry wood door was a strange protrusive entity in the dusty house, and inside her desk sat at the plexus of the triangulated room, two imposing bookshelves reached out to you like wooden arms--lined with dusted books and pictures of her with many dignitaries: King George the 3rd, Napoleon, Richard Nixon and Kissinger Nixon (which is strange since the Union was yet to enter the War of Northern Aggression.)
She beckoned him to sit. She was in a nice suit.
"Steven." She said.
"Mother." He said, sitting down.
"I am leaving. I recieved this brown envelope in the mail yesterday."
Pause.
"And I would have received it and immediately notified you of its ramifications if my mail-clerk weren't as incompetent as a set of Firestone tires on a ford explorer." She said, she paused, her gaze turned up and to the right above Steven's head. "full of hip-hop artists."
The Firestone/Ford controversy was about 250 years ahead of Steven's time sitting across from his mother. Naturally, he was silent.
"The envelope has promising leads, I have to go." And with that she stood up, two identical suitcases in hand. "I will call you." She said. "Sweetie." She said that in such a way as to indicate it was the first time those words had ever left her mouth. (And the thought; her brain.)
"She wrote you a letter." Said father, on the porch.
Steven kept staring out into the woods. "I don't want to read it." He said.
"I think you should, boy."
"Why?"
"She found Axelrod Buttertable."
"You know, a horrible man and the devil may be layered over one another," said Steven's father on the porch, "and the difference," he spat "negligible."
"Negligible at best, paw!" Said Steven.
"Shut up, boy." Father chucked a stone at Steven's head, prompting the errant youngster to resume looking forward again.
In the distance Steven had a brother. He was out in those dark woods, presumably lost. Further into the thick of the dark and into the lights of the city Steven had another brother who by all accounts had died. In outer space dwelt Steven's celestial father.
Steven remembered his mother, she had taken short leave to pursue a flimsy string of clues out in the American Southwest leading to her brother, Axelrod Buttertable, Steven's uncle.
He recalled:
Walking through the dilapidated house, shit and dust and objects askance. He had heard his mother's buzzer, he had been summoned into her spic-and-span office. The lacquered cherry wood door was a strange protrusive entity in the dusty house, and inside her desk sat at the plexus of the triangulated room, two imposing bookshelves reached out to you like wooden arms--lined with dusted books and pictures of her with many dignitaries: King George the 3rd, Napoleon, Richard Nixon and Kissinger Nixon (which is strange since the Union was yet to enter the War of Northern Aggression.)
She beckoned him to sit. She was in a nice suit.
"Steven." She said.
"Mother." He said, sitting down.
"I am leaving. I recieved this brown envelope in the mail yesterday."
Pause.
"And I would have received it and immediately notified you of its ramifications if my mail-clerk weren't as incompetent as a set of Firestone tires on a ford explorer." She said, she paused, her gaze turned up and to the right above Steven's head. "full of hip-hop artists."
The Firestone/Ford controversy was about 250 years ahead of Steven's time sitting across from his mother. Naturally, he was silent.
"The envelope has promising leads, I have to go." And with that she stood up, two identical suitcases in hand. "I will call you." She said. "Sweetie." She said that in such a way as to indicate it was the first time those words had ever left her mouth. (And the thought; her brain.)
"She wrote you a letter." Said father, on the porch.
Steven kept staring out into the woods. "I don't want to read it." He said.
"I think you should, boy."
"Why?"
"She found Axelrod Buttertable."
Friday, July 23, 2010
1. Sunrise
Steven St. Murphy had a delightful shack that he kept full of mice traps. The collected dust concealed them on the ground, dried dead leaves concealed them on the shelves, and the ones visible to the eye were meant to be visible--he wants you to see them, they aren't concealed.
Today Steven slept outside, near the cliff's edge. He would have liked to have slept indoors but something about the mid-summer heat drove his vision into purple splotches on the bedroom ceiling, turned his ears into voices whispering fear, bugs both real and imagined ambushed in turn. It was in times such as these that young Steven climbed up to his beloved shack and took refuge under a crooked tree. The peace afforded to him there was celestial, especially on hot nights. The wind blew upon his crooked, twisted, sweaty body and the candle-lights below blurred into big octagonal spots as he drifted away.
“They’re for spirits” Steven had once remarked to his beloved, “the ghosts, the one’s that come up here.”
She sat at the base of his tree, smiling at him like Mia Farrow. “Do they ever go off, then?”
“Eh, only when an animal comes through, its kind of a pain.”
A squirrel had came in once and set off a chain reaction of traps. One such trap fell from a rafter and clamped Steven’s elbow, changing it into a purple bump ineligible for fieldwork.
Wisps of Lucille’s hair Van-Goghed in the orange light. She was pretty, wasn’t she?
Wasn’t she?
Today Steven slept outside, near the cliff's edge. He would have liked to have slept indoors but something about the mid-summer heat drove his vision into purple splotches on the bedroom ceiling, turned his ears into voices whispering fear, bugs both real and imagined ambushed in turn. It was in times such as these that young Steven climbed up to his beloved shack and took refuge under a crooked tree. The peace afforded to him there was celestial, especially on hot nights. The wind blew upon his crooked, twisted, sweaty body and the candle-lights below blurred into big octagonal spots as he drifted away.
“They’re for spirits” Steven had once remarked to his beloved, “the ghosts, the one’s that come up here.”
She sat at the base of his tree, smiling at him like Mia Farrow. “Do they ever go off, then?”
“Eh, only when an animal comes through, its kind of a pain.”
A squirrel had came in once and set off a chain reaction of traps. One such trap fell from a rafter and clamped Steven’s elbow, changing it into a purple bump ineligible for fieldwork.
Wisps of Lucille’s hair Van-Goghed in the orange light. She was pretty, wasn’t she?
Wasn’t she?
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