worms.

this is a short story i wrote a little over a year ago that i just re read tonight and i can honestly say i really dig it. *high fives self*. so yeah, enjoy!

 

it tastes like rain. like earthworms. like dark, wet black soil. it smells like when you’re on your way to school after a good rain storm. you walk on worms that have been washed out of their worm holes the entire way to your elementary school. it tastes like playing god or the closest you’re gunna get when you’re eleven years old. everything looked like it was shades of gray- the trees, the grass, the houses, the streets, the air… all monochromatic shades of concrete and metal. i didn’t ordinarily see everything so colourlessly, let me assure you. there was just something so cold and lifeless about that particular morning that even an eleven year old could feel. i sat on the big front steps of my house in my yellow rubber boots and my blue spring jacket waiting for fun to come and find me, or at least inspiration for something better to do. i think my clothes may have been the only colour i could see, just like in a black and white movie, where you only ever noticed red and blue. i had a ball that i found outside my school. i took it and i knew it was wrong of me but i didn’t care. it wasn’t mine. but i took it, just the same, and i hid it in the right front pocket of my blue spring jacket and i walked home with my guilt/liberty well concealed. i got it home and i hid it under some rocks beside the porch and i kept it there because i liked my first taste of defiance but i feared the repercussions so i buried the ball. i think that was the first time i knowingly did something that i knew was completely wrong, yet still did because i was eleven years old, and i was beginning to try things MY way, which oddly enough was the complete opposite of the way i was told. i toyed with my stolen ball and watched the street for nothing in particular. i remember the hedges at the front of our lawn right next to the street. they were tall and thick and reminded me of a fortress from a castle. i remember seeing the top of what looked to be a mans head walking on the sidewalk on the other side of the hedge. he must have been a giant to be taller than those hedges. i was terrified of this person even though i hadn’t even seen the man. yet i watched the gray head walking past and past and past the gray hedges against the gray sky and the gray grass and gray gray gray, only getting closer to the place the leafy fortress and the driveway met, revealing a cement driveway and no place to hide. my body shrunk up and i hid my face in my lap and kept only my eyes visible. the man stopped where the hedges stopped and he was the biggest man i had ever seen. towering, even from that distance, with these small black eyes peering at me from beneath thick, furrowed eyebrows. his hair was thin and flat to his head and nose was big. he was ugly. his hands looked like baseball mitts hanging at both his sides like weights in a pair of stockings. he had a blue coat like mine. colour. his coat was the only other colour i remember that day. the man began to walk. but not across the driveway and back behind the hedges on the opposite side away away away from me. he walked slowly. he walked up the driveway. he didn’t break eye contact with me, it was like even though i was as small and invisible as i could possibly be, he still saw me there behind my arms and my knees and he knew exactly where to find me and he would. the vacant look on his face didn’t change and he walked in a straight line, head forward, eerily slowly towards me with distinct purpose in his eyes. i was too terrified to move, maybe partially too proud because i was 11 years old and big boys don’t scream or cry or run away. they hide the evidence and dig it up when their parents aren’t around and they appreciate it like a grown man appreciates an expensive cigar or a porno magazine. invisibleinvisibleinvisible. the mans feet were bigger than any feet i’d ever seen. the kind of feet they’d use to make the fake bigfoot footprints at tacky souvenir shops. his eyes. i couldn’t breathe. who was he. why was he coming towards me why wasn’t he saying anything graygraygray. i closed my eyes as hard as i could and wished that it would end. i wished i would open my eyes and the colour would suddenly come rushing back into the world like when you hit the top of an old tv and your picture fixes itself. i wished i was 6 so i could yell and scream and somebody would come and save me and it would all be forgotten by the time i was old enough to understand. i could feel him nearing me, i could feel his gaze burning through my defenses. he was so close. i braced myself for something i didn’t know how to brace myself for. he was so close. waited. i felt… nothing. still nothing. nothing. still nothing. it felt like forever and i knew something happened that altered what seemed to be my imminent fate on my front porch that dismal day. even within that thick nothingness that might ordinarily imply things are ok, i knew they weren’t. i could taste it in the air, the taste of top soil and walking on worms all the way to class. i knew that something big had just happened. i knew the silence meant worse things then what sounds would. sounds are for dramatic effect. this situation didn’t need it. i opened one eye and then the other and peeked over my arms hugging my knees. the gray man was lying on the cement in front of me, motionless not more than 5 feet away. his head twisted to the side, his skin looked the same colour as the cement his arms bent twice beside his head. his eyes were open like i’d never seen before. widegray. eyes open so wide you know it can only mean that the person saw their life flash before their eyes and by the time you find them, they’re already gone. but their eyes are watching that same reel until somebody can turn it off. the kind of dead eyes they put coins on in movies. this is what death was to me at eleven years old- black and white movies and coins and bigfoot and baseball gloves for hands. that was how i understood what was happening…this is how i made it real. eleven year old associations for a situation that i still could never explain. he didn’t move. he fell to the ground silently- the world was an old black and white opera and the volume didn’t work. he took his final bow and the volume didn’t work. i didn’t move. i didn’t know what to feel. it smelled like soil and earthworms and rain and everything was dead quiet and and those were things i understood at eleven years old. everything was in monochromatic shades of gray except his blue coat and my blue coat and my rubber boots. and i don’t know what that meant.my ball fell from my hands and bounced down the big wooden stairs, thump thump slowmotionthump step by step until it came to a stop against the mans still body. the ball was gray. his coat was blue. he was dead in front of me.his life ended a stolen balls toss away from me and his coat was blue and i was eleven years old and the world was gray that day.

 

 

 

using alone as a noun.

so i`ll be honest here- i`ve  become quite comfortable on my own. now, `on my own` in this context is referring to a number of things.

1- actually physically living on my own. i`ve been in the same place for 3 years, all the while enjoying the freedom to walk around in the buff, watch porn in the livingroom and the ability to entertain any number of guests at any time i so desired. not to mention the leeway to decorate how i want, which is the biggest factor in my belief that i am going to die a lonely old spinster in a house SO full of my old treasures that there wouldn`t have been room for a significant other, anyway. i can`t imagine what it would be like to share a place with a partner, to have to get the go ahead from another person before hanging a picture on the wall. and the thought of having to put up with somebody elses terrible taste in decor makes fear resonate from the depths of my being. yes, you may be right- perhaps i AM just being neurotic. i have never lived with a significant other in the past so maybe the ideas i have formed ARE completely unfounded and skewed, but the fact remains- i like being the king of my castle, and finding a fair knight who is willing to settle for being a lowly page in my kingdom might be asking too much.

2. being without a real `significant other.` i admit it- i do like the freedom that comes with having no binding ties to another person. it`s nice to be able to hang out with my friends whenever i want free of worry or consequence and i appreciate never finding myself in the role of the annoying friend who disappears once they find a new mate. yup, it`s easy peasy being me.

nobody has become a constant source of companionship, nobody calls, nobody is around when i want somebody to be.  i guess it`s just a matter of shifting your perception to realize that you CAN be all the company you need if you just get used to entertaining yourself. people become so reliant on the presence of others that they panic when they find themselves alone… you know these people- the people who are constantly in relationships or the incredibly needy friend.  silence is deafening to these people because it just reminds them that they can`t stand to be alone with themselves. and to me, that must be an incredibly sad reality to live in because really, if you can`t even keep your own attention- what are you going to have to offer somebody else long term?

and so people keep hopping and jumping and moving from one other lonely soul to the next just long enough that they don`t ever find themselves alone in their own head.

and me?  perhaps i am the opposite- too enthralled by my own internal dialogue that i don`t even give anybody else a second of my precious time because really, after this long watching the same show- nothing else feels quite as right. i`m sure i am missing out on a whole world of opportunity by not opening myself up, and i`m working on the whole concept of `putting myself out there`because realistically, my bed is big enough for two- it`s just a matter of kicking nobody out and letting somebody in, if you know what i mean.

 

cockaWHAT?!

before i got into this, i want you to know that i am absolutely mortified about what i am about to tell you and i don’t want you to think that this is an indicator of the way i live because it is NOT. so read on at your own discretion, but promise you’ll still come over to visit in a few weeks time when i am sure that all traces of my recent squatters are gone.

i have never shared my apartment with many creepy crawlies. i’ve been in the same place for 3 years and 1 month as of  today. occasionally i’ve brushed shoulders with a spider who’d taken up residence on the window sill inside my shower and there have been armies of fruit flies who moved in on my kitchen but never stayed long. there have been transient bees who found their way in through my bedroom window. but none of these multiple legged little buggers stuck around very long or very persistently and to be honest, i don’t mind sharing my square footage with them as long as there aren’t too many of them, they aren’t scream inducingly scary, they don’t come popping out of things unexpectedly and they maintain their distance. *shrugs*

recently i have become acquainted by the grossest bug to visit my apartment yet- the cockroach.

i arrived home from my week away to find out that my landlord must have subletted the place while i was away. first two new ‘tenants’ were hanging out on the shower curtain when i went in to take my bath. the next few were discovered scrounging for food in the kitchen, then a few on the computer desk, probably bogarting my internet connection. needless to say, it didn’t take very long for me to express my concerns to the landlord.

i spent an awful lot of time on the internet trying to find evidence to prove that the pests in question were NOT cockroaches. i reassured myself by saying things like ‘they CAN’T be cockraoches because they are squishy!’ ‘they can’t be cockroaches because they are so small’ or ‘they can’t be cockroaches because i will cry if they are’  etc etc.  in hindsight, it’s a lucky thing for me  that i DIDN’T know that they were cockroaches at the time, otherwise i might not have been so brazen in killing them and they might be as big as a frying pan by now.

…no- but seriously. GROSS. absolutely, one hundred percently vomit in my own pocket DISGUSTING. i have cockroaches. i have a pretty good idea of where they came from, and being as they have only really been seen in my apartment i am fairly certain my assumption is correct. i have been telling people they cant come over since i found out first hand how easy it obviously is to transfer the eggs on/in your clothing and i would be mortified if i were to give them to anybody else. i keep my place pretty clean and up until now my place has not been real estate that bugs seemed to have their (many) eyes on.  growing up where i did we never had cockroaches… and up until very recently i’d never even seen one that wasn’t in some crack house on american Cops.

the fumigator came through on friday afternoon and reapplied the gel treatment that takes care of the buggers for a year or so. i was told they’d all be dead within a few days or so and  i thought i was in the clear, not having seen one for a good chunk of time until i did the dishes tonight and i saw one scuttle underneath the kitchen counter. *shudders* i have my fingers and my toes crossed that they’ll be completely moved out within the next day or so and that i won’t ever have to share my place with them again.

here is a random picture of a cockroach and a cowboy twinkie because all the pictures of real cockroches were too scary.

eeeeeyuck.