sillymess

The culmination of years impropriation, years in forbidden dialogue with the phantasmic forces of magic, precipitated his cloistered savagery in a certain sense. A nuance of rabid discourtesy and a dollop of bidden baroque. He growled in an afflicted fury and belched with raving supernatural glee. The mystery of his promise with primal pasts and caveman ethics remained in question. An illusory force and the press of changeable aggression, he found what was viable by the wont of an aged inheritance in blood, in rage, in the hunt for times of lost fire and bone soup.

The sociology professor grumbled and shook the war axe with an ear splitting scream, “AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAAA!” The axe had been a gift from the dean of fine arts. He let out another whoop and stomped his foot on a passing palmetto bug. The crunch satisfied his aggression.

Temptation offered its wont and he found the urge to eat the bug almost overwhelming. He resisted, scratching his crotch. Looking across the room he spotted the rose in delicate crystal. Flinging himself at the glass rose he paused long enough to grab the gold etched stem. He lifted the rose to his nose slowly and smiled. He didn’t know much else in that moment, he was a barbarian.

It was an old house. Made of poop that stayed fresh. Turds lived there. There was Mama Turd, Papa Turd, and Baby Turd.
One day Papa Turd returned home from a hard day of labor and found Mama Turd lying on her bed, crying.
“What is it?” asked Papa Turd.
She sprung into Papa Turd’s arms. “It’s Baby Turd!”
“What of Baby Turd?”
“He stopped using the potty!”
“Stopped using the potty ?”
“Completely.”
“Strange…” reflected Papa Turd, scratching his pointy top.
“What are we to do? The house reeks of dead people.”
“It does ?”
“Don’t you smell it?”
Papa Turd took a big whiff. “Now that you mention it, it does smell of dead people.”
“Yes. I used the skillet on them. You’ll have to take the trash out. I’m baking. I don’t want the rotten smell of dead people in our lasagna.”
“No. We don’t want that. Why didn’t you just flush them?”
“You know that’s sacrilegious. It must be a live offering.”
“Oh yes. Of course.”
Papa Turd went to the trash. On top he saw a pile of dead people in all different styles of clothing. My the fashion these days of the world’s filth, he reflected.
One of the dead people began to move. It looked like a teenager with long blonde hair, wearing headphones. His leg was mangled.
“Dude,” he said to Papa Turd, “help me. My leg. I think it’s—“
Papa Turd smashed the teenager’s head between his two fingers, tied the garbage bag, and took it to the trashcan made of turd vomit out back. He returned. His wife was screaming.
“One’s alive! One’s alive! It went behind the couch. It’s on rollerblades!” she yelled.
“The mousetrap will surely—”
Snap!
“Nevermind,” he finished.
At dinner Papa Turd brought up the subject to Baby Turd. “Why did you stop?”
“I no ike it,” said Baby Turd.
“Don’t like what?”
“Da noise.”
“What noise?”
“Da peepa. Dey dwown. Dey scweam an dey dwown.”
“Oh, that ,” said Papa Turd. “That’s nothing to worry about. They’re just people.”
“Dey scweam an dey dwown,” repeated Baby Turd.
“We need to use the potty. These people…they’re no good. They spread diseases and wars.”
“Dey dwown.”
“That’s okay, son. It’s the Anal God’s wish. So let’s just use the potty. Ok?”
“O-dey.”
“That-a-boy. Papa Turd knows best, right Mama?” He winked at Mama Turd across the table. She smiled.
A low rumble shook the house as a harsh wind blew through the opened shutters, smelling sublime.
“See there,” said Papa Turd, joyfully. “We’ve just been blessed.”

Treadmills:

I use the treadmill not so much for exercise as for the sensors which measure heart rate through your palms. I do this to ascertain whether I’m still alive. Red letters display proof of existence, a number that often doesn’t surpass the weekly murder rate of this city. The drug war has crippled our family. We’ve lost three members: two innocent bystanders and a Sinaloa cartel cousin caught in a hail of gunfire. I watch my pulse fluctuate, the numbers proof no bullets have entered my blood stream; yet.

Bicycles:

I peddle, my foot against the metal as if I have a gun in my mouth. I can taste the barrel, metal scratching against the enamel of my teeth. Looking into the chamber, I see blackness, starry night as I peddle into the distance, my vision blurry as I hurry to escape the madness of my imagination, as the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels chase me down the street, my feet burning, my bloody hands confirming my worst suspicions, I peddle into the apocalypse.

Rowing Machine:

Electronic oars: how I hate thee. Still, we beat on, against the invisible Rio Grande current in the dead of night. The stars our only compass, aroma of body odor our only evidence of past struggles–besides the broken blood vessels in sunken eyes–we beat on toward freedom, one wave at a time.

Free Weights:

My hands grip the metal bars like a prison cell, held captive, I fight for freedom, reaching toward the heavens, demented Gringo in a land of guerrillas. Monkey bars and jungle gym and fruit smoothies and only the echoes of gunshots in the distance, tinted bulletproof windows: my best friend. Barbells toward the sky, we fly.

Dumbbells:

Must be named after the atavistic meritorious meatheads in front of the mirror admiring their pecks. I lift mine in front of the wall in the corner, away from all the pervasive mirrors, an escape from the cathartic narcissism of the gym. The windows may be bulletproof, but nothing is safe in Juarez. Exhausted, I collapse onto the floor. Nobody notices; this is Juarez after all.

Exercise Ball:

Crawling like a spider, I admire my image in the mirror, spinning a web around an enormous balance ball I look like a tourist, sweat dripping, my intestines gnawing against dirty porous carpet, mouth wide open. Who the hell cares what they think? They don’t even hear the gunshots anymore; murder is more common than birds chirping. Lurching my stomach on top of the ball, rolling over, back and forth, until there is nothing keeping me from jumping on top and running down the street like a circus performer. Make it a little easier for the cartels to target me. They’ll get us all sooner or later anyway. God bless America for consuming drugs like Hoover vacuums.