Short Fiction: Rapture

He stands on his front lawn, dressed in a pair of shorts and sandals, staring upwards as the setting sun tinges the clouds pink.

It is the evening of May 21, 2011.

And the world hasn't ended.

Inside his house, he has killed his dog, a dose of rat poison hidden in the morning kibble. His wife and children left weeks ago, scared as Daddy gave things away and spent more and more time tuned into a single radio station, maxing out his credit cards and emptying their accounts with checks and donations. They're living states away now, with her parents, trying to finalize the divorce.

He stands on the lawn and stares upward. He is sure his faith will be rewarded.

As night falls, his next-door neighbor drives past, shaking his head and mentioning to his wife how he had always been such a nice guy. A pity, they say.

The next day, he is still standing there looking upward. And the next. He is getting thinner, his skin clinging and burning in the sun. He opens his mouth for the rain on the fourth day, somehow still alive and refreshed by this bounty of his God. He doesn't move otherwise.

It has been a week when the police come and take him to the hospital.

His nurse is named Lucy. She tells him this while he lies in bed. His family doesn't visit and the wind against the window indicates every hour of the day that the world still persists.

He is sure something must be wrong.

After a month, he sits up. There is no wind on the window. It is steamed over.

He stumbles out of bed, tired from sitting so long, muscles weak from their lack of movement. He walks down the hallway, pushing open doors and seeing nothing but empty beds. In one stairwell he finds a cane and leans on it, heading slowly down to the lobby.

The elevators aren't working.

In the lobby, he sees Lucy. She is sitting on the reception counter, smiling at him. He pauses, and then smiles back at her. She hops down and helps him to the door.

She looks at him and says, you got it wrong. She smiles wider. You got it all wrong.

He is sure he sees a wisp of smoke as she says this.

She opens the door and pushes him outside.

Fights

Have you ever been in a fight?

I have, a few times, and while most of them were over quickly, they're not experiences that I go out of my way to have. But now I feel like I'm stuck in one. Not with a person, but with reality. Reality has a fucker of a boot stomping on my knee and is thoroughly enjoying the feeling of my jawbone cracking as it slams my head against the pavement.

Maybe that's a little extreme.

I'm in a state of flux. I'm planning a return to school. I have no idea what my career path looks like, and more and more it's deepening into a turbulent, hideous spiral. I say science like that covers everything and I look around, eager to barnacle myself to the first person who offers me a concrete way. Never mind that most people would scrape me off, worried such a pustule would carry them downward with it.

So I sit back and I write. I put beautiful words or angry ones or simple, straightforward tone deaf ones out there. I work minimum wage jobs and I come home and I draw and paint or pick through a journal with increasingly short and colorless postings. And when no one pauses, picks up my perfect, lucid sentences, I just go back to disjointed dementia.

What do I do? I love writing, I love art, and I love science. I love the world around me. But every time I turn around, I feel like something is stopping me. And I'm noticing who's fault it is.

It's my own.

I can't blame it on the politicians. They'll fuck up and blow hot air up our asses whether I read it or not. I can't blame it on beautiful women, the internet, video games, comic books, or stupid cartoons with the same deadened fart jokes. It's my fault. I have to accept this.

And fuck, I need to do something about it.

This post has been brought to you by exhaustion, caffeine and reading too much Transmetropolitan this week.

We call that irony kids.

I'll see you tomorrow with a fresh outlook.

Short Fiction: Road

A man is standing on the edge of the sidewalk. He is standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, cars rushing by in front of him when suddenly the road changes.

It is hot lava.

The man glances around at the people near him, taken aback. None of them give any indication that things have changed. He looks at the cars. They're all driving normally, tires passing through the lava, splashing it slightly.

The light changes.

The cars halt, the lava rocking slightly forward, waves heading down the street. The people near him brush past and into the crosswalk, their feet leaving faint depressions in the hot lava, filling back in as they walk. None of them scream or cry out, no indications that the road has changed to molten rock.

The light changes.

The man remembers being a child, playing hot lava in his living room with his brother and sister. Certain parts of the floor were hot lava; you couldn't touch them or you'd die. They changed according to his oldest brother's whims, happily killing off his siblings until he was the only one left on a safe sofa island, ruler of all that he surveyed.

The man smiles. He must just be remembering things. The road hasn't changed. He is having some sort of heat hallucination. It is unusually hot today, and the weather is unseasonably humid too. And now as he looks, the road seems to be solidifying. It is back to normal. He will call his brother tonight and they'll laugh about this.

The light changes.

***

A woman is standing on the edge of the sidewalk. In front of her a man has just melted into the street, a smile on his face.

Poverty level paycheque, insidious rich-guy dreams

I've been noticing this worse lately.

I have a build-up of want in me. This has taken many forms over the years, from secret lusting for the girl two lockers down to a desire to buy every new video game that gets a decent review. I used to be able to control this.

Now, judging from the credit card debt incurred, I'm no longer able to.

What changed?

I'm getting older. As I do, and stay mired in minimum wage, just-above-poverty-level jobs, I see the progress of my friends and peers around me. They're getting real jobs, forming lasting relationships with spouses and significant others, and most relevantly, settling down. And in doing this settling down they are putting out money for houses, televisions, amenities.

And I can't.

I shouldn't react in the childish way that I have and I honestly don't think it was conscious, but my sheer consumption has picked up recently. Every new CD that vaguely intrigued me, a Nintendo 3DS, video games, books, all were purchased on mild whims. That's not to say they aren't things I haven't enjoyed thoroughly, just things that I could have lived without.

How do we solve this?

If I were younger, I'd probably say some bullshit about how it wasn't really my fault and that I just had self-control, depression, and anxiety issues. Some of that is still true. But now I have to take responsibility for most of it, and let the other fall on the fuckstorm of a capitalist culture we live in.

I'm Buddhist, mostly. But I'm also an aggressive consumer. And I'm reading 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein. So what do I listen to, the precepts against consumption, my love of media, or the fact that brands and corporations are evil dog-sucking leeches?

Moderation, or to borrow the Buddhist lingo, the middle way. I have to cut back, still enjoy myself, and try to avoid padding the pockets of too many evil tax-dodging owms.

Which is why I'm writing this in the back room at work. Take that society.