I'm dumping this here because LA needs some more content and it's been a while since I've contributed. It has nothing to do with anything, and it's more of an excerpt than a short story (as it lacks an ending), but i felt like writing. so.
I originally was kinda planning on expanding this into a novella of some sort but I decided the plot was too pretentious and I wanted to do something more narrative.
--
untitled
The rain breathed out unintelligible paf!s as they fled to prostrate on the pavement. They spoke in heady little intimations, collections of recollections dispersing into the anomalous melody of the evening shower. A car glissaded over the glassy asphalt--or at least, it seemed to, until the low, uneven roll of white noise could quaver down the street in exposition; it signaled that static-sound of new tires gripping oily pavement. An unobtrusive rumble from the engine followed suit. The driver was obscured by shadows, but snatches of light grabbed her blouse and lit up pie slices along her right arm and chest, flashing the vivid blue fabric among the mirrory greys and murky blacks. The car itself--something foreign, something efficient, something expensive--mimicked the hueless sky. Woe-begotten rain droplets clung to it for brief seconds, until they were shrugged off and cast away from the sloping trunk and the sleek rear bumper.
Troy blew a mist of rainwater off his upper lip as he watched the miracle of modern invention amble past. The woman-driver hadn't seen him, but even still, it felt as if she'd been glancing in his direction. Perhaps some instinct had warned her of a presence in his location: a pressure, some heat signature that wasn't wholly perceived. A dim crimson cascade bounced off the road as she stuttered on the brake intuitively. Most folks could tell when other people were around, even if they weren't immediately visible.
The city was full of them: Red and blue platelets, coursing through the arteries and capillaries of the grand circulatory infrastructure. Mindlessly nourishing the centers they needed to, all while piling atop one another around the manifesting clogs, bruises, and tumors, blossoming all around in a field of death-colored posies. People. Minding their own business, minding other peoples' business--but all the same, figuring that they had everything mapped out for them. Assuming that their reality was all there was and all there'd ever be.
Unlike them, however, the blind man in the park knew Troy was around; he'd honed that much-neglected sixth sense into a fine blade of lucidity.
THE park, Troy mused. He felt as if he might be smirking but made no real effort to show it. There were hundreds of parks he'd been through. The park with Blind Thomas could be a thousand miles away, for all it mattered. It was always "the"-something. The park, the bus, the turnstyle, the hour, the box of instant curry. Placing frivolous importance on unimportant things, associating memories with places and objects and strangers. It was really only a park, just one park out of the thousands dotting the country (maybe millions? Who cares to count municipal zonings?). Why was it special?
"He knew I was there," the man answered his thoughts. As he wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, and wasn't really trying to inform anyone of anything, he'd oversimplified the conjecture. He was referring of course to Blind Thomas. It was the park because that was the only one in the world which contained that moment. A glossy lead-glass snowglobe, encasing a glimpse of time. And frozen inside the vacuum-sealed chamber filled with glycerin and soap flakes, was a miniature porcelain scene of a queer old homeless fellow, wearing giant 80's sunglasses, asking Troy if the man had any spare change. The fellow had looked a little like Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I., except dehydrated like beef jerky, and left without a barber or a beard trimmer for several months. His eyes were squinted, and his bottom lip was a turned-down bedspread. But it was special not because of the way the guy looked, or what he'd asked for: it was the way Blind Thomas had done it, period. Plainly, openly, with an air of boredom, and all the tenacity of mundanely paying a parking ticket.
"Speak up, man!" The beggar had complained, after Troy had opened the floodgates of interjections at him. "I know you're jawin' away but I can't make out a damned thing you're sayin'!"
Troy had had a dog whistle as a boy. He'd bought it off the back of a dimestore comic book. It'd taken 6-to-8 weeks to arrive, and he'd forgotten about it between the time he'd sent the cash and the point his mother had dropped the brown parcel on the kitchen table. He didn't have a dog, but he'd been curious about it all the same. Send Secret Messages to Your Canine Friends! the 2"-by-2" advertisement proclaimed, dolled up in a bold, decorative font, above an amateurish drawing of a collie perking up an ear and smiling a doggy smile. That particular day he ordered it, Troy wasn't terribly interested in blowing his lunch money on a pack of cigarettes in the bathroom again (he still had 8 left in the pack: they tasted like sucking on hot Vapo-Rub and none of the kids had been treating him any differently, despite all the coolness he'd been told he'd acquire upon taking the first drag). It was a burden carrying money to school now, because it was common knowledge among the sixth graders at Morningrow Elementary, that if you had cash, then you had to spend it.
In remedy of the situation, his absently-saved five dollar bill was placed in a small office envelope, along with the carefully-clipped and filled-out ad, and dropped into the mailbox. It summarily disintegrated into the postal system, never to be seen again. But after he'd finally received the package from the NovelCo Corporation, there was little surprise or celebration. He opened the box nonchalantly, and discovered his long-forgotten prize with a mild taste of nostalgia. Wasting no time (though acting mostly in boredom and instinctual curiosity rather than excitement), he drew it to his lips to bleat out a test of the item.
There'd been a large part of him, the more reflexive part of his brain, expecting a noise. Instead it was like walking off a porch stoop and expecting to step down, but then the shoe hits pavement about twelve inches too soon. The only sound escaping was that of his breath. Dumbly, he'd held it to his eyes, and inspected it. As the child could lay no claim toward being an expert on whistle-assembly, and had no idea in general about how they worked at all, he concluded that the whistle was fine, and realized that he cannot, unfortunately, hear all the same things a dog can (though the reasons behind that mystery were eluding him as well).
Later that day, Troy had carried it in his pocket with him to his friend Harold's. Harold, a brother among four who lived in a small apartment uptown, had no dog either. He did, however, own a grey tabby cat. They'd only tooted the silent tin whistle a few times before the animal noticeably panicked at it. Allegedly, this magical device could cross the species-boundaries, and work on any furry companion. Upon discovery of this phenomenon, the boys had chased the poor animal all over the house, causing it to shudder and scramble away frenetically with every blow. Harold had eventually cornered his pet between the sofa and the wall, and kept whistling, grinning around the mouthpiece in a deranged fashion, reveling in the gooey-sweet schadenfreude. Troy began to feel sympathy for the animal's fear-bloated expression, and he asked Harold to cut it out. The ginger-haired beast then turned to Troy, and, instead of retorting, blew the whistle with all his might right into Troy's ear.
There wasn't an audible noise, but there was a presence of noise. He had felt the pressure against his eardrum, and it had bounced around in his head. It had felt like hearing Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song for the first time again, full blast, in the basement of Cindy Wakeman's house. A sudden effusion of riffing claxons hammering out an exhilarating treble, drowning out everything else in a fleeting vacuum of total silence. And yet, Harold felt absolutely nothing. He was both confused and amused by his friend's strange reaction. The cat scrambled away at last, and Troy stumbled back, his brain lurching to pick up the pieces in a hurry.
That is what he was to Blind Thomas. A deafening, chimerical warble. Invisible sound waves, lapping against the shores of the vagabond's ear, but not washing up anything intelligible. This realization had solidified Troy in a way. It was important because he knew at that point that he, in fact, existed.
A fat pad of butter slid into the man's line of vision. A checkerboard strip ran along one lumpy side, and distended taillights dotting the back brightened as the corpulent thing rumbled to a halt on the street corner. A door opened, and a trim, black umbrella unfurled, followed by an equally trim man in an equally black suit. He fumbled with his wallet as he tried to stuff it back into his breast pocket. Now was as good a time as any to leave. Troy shuffled in and squeezed behind the gentleman before the taxi door could slam shut.
If you're trying to get nowhere in particular, you may as well try to get there quickly.
I originally was kinda planning on expanding this into a novella of some sort but I decided the plot was too pretentious and I wanted to do something more narrative.
--
untitled
The rain breathed out unintelligible paf!s as they fled to prostrate on the pavement. They spoke in heady little intimations, collections of recollections dispersing into the anomalous melody of the evening shower. A car glissaded over the glassy asphalt--or at least, it seemed to, until the low, uneven roll of white noise could quaver down the street in exposition; it signaled that static-sound of new tires gripping oily pavement. An unobtrusive rumble from the engine followed suit. The driver was obscured by shadows, but snatches of light grabbed her blouse and lit up pie slices along her right arm and chest, flashing the vivid blue fabric among the mirrory greys and murky blacks. The car itself--something foreign, something efficient, something expensive--mimicked the hueless sky. Woe-begotten rain droplets clung to it for brief seconds, until they were shrugged off and cast away from the sloping trunk and the sleek rear bumper.
Troy blew a mist of rainwater off his upper lip as he watched the miracle of modern invention amble past. The woman-driver hadn't seen him, but even still, it felt as if she'd been glancing in his direction. Perhaps some instinct had warned her of a presence in his location: a pressure, some heat signature that wasn't wholly perceived. A dim crimson cascade bounced off the road as she stuttered on the brake intuitively. Most folks could tell when other people were around, even if they weren't immediately visible.
The city was full of them: Red and blue platelets, coursing through the arteries and capillaries of the grand circulatory infrastructure. Mindlessly nourishing the centers they needed to, all while piling atop one another around the manifesting clogs, bruises, and tumors, blossoming all around in a field of death-colored posies. People. Minding their own business, minding other peoples' business--but all the same, figuring that they had everything mapped out for them. Assuming that their reality was all there was and all there'd ever be.
Unlike them, however, the blind man in the park knew Troy was around; he'd honed that much-neglected sixth sense into a fine blade of lucidity.
THE park, Troy mused. He felt as if he might be smirking but made no real effort to show it. There were hundreds of parks he'd been through. The park with Blind Thomas could be a thousand miles away, for all it mattered. It was always "the"-something. The park, the bus, the turnstyle, the hour, the box of instant curry. Placing frivolous importance on unimportant things, associating memories with places and objects and strangers. It was really only a park, just one park out of the thousands dotting the country (maybe millions? Who cares to count municipal zonings?). Why was it special?
"He knew I was there," the man answered his thoughts. As he wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, and wasn't really trying to inform anyone of anything, he'd oversimplified the conjecture. He was referring of course to Blind Thomas. It was the park because that was the only one in the world which contained that moment. A glossy lead-glass snowglobe, encasing a glimpse of time. And frozen inside the vacuum-sealed chamber filled with glycerin and soap flakes, was a miniature porcelain scene of a queer old homeless fellow, wearing giant 80's sunglasses, asking Troy if the man had any spare change. The fellow had looked a little like Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I., except dehydrated like beef jerky, and left without a barber or a beard trimmer for several months. His eyes were squinted, and his bottom lip was a turned-down bedspread. But it was special not because of the way the guy looked, or what he'd asked for: it was the way Blind Thomas had done it, period. Plainly, openly, with an air of boredom, and all the tenacity of mundanely paying a parking ticket.
"Speak up, man!" The beggar had complained, after Troy had opened the floodgates of interjections at him. "I know you're jawin' away but I can't make out a damned thing you're sayin'!"
Troy had had a dog whistle as a boy. He'd bought it off the back of a dimestore comic book. It'd taken 6-to-8 weeks to arrive, and he'd forgotten about it between the time he'd sent the cash and the point his mother had dropped the brown parcel on the kitchen table. He didn't have a dog, but he'd been curious about it all the same. Send Secret Messages to Your Canine Friends! the 2"-by-2" advertisement proclaimed, dolled up in a bold, decorative font, above an amateurish drawing of a collie perking up an ear and smiling a doggy smile. That particular day he ordered it, Troy wasn't terribly interested in blowing his lunch money on a pack of cigarettes in the bathroom again (he still had 8 left in the pack: they tasted like sucking on hot Vapo-Rub and none of the kids had been treating him any differently, despite all the coolness he'd been told he'd acquire upon taking the first drag). It was a burden carrying money to school now, because it was common knowledge among the sixth graders at Morningrow Elementary, that if you had cash, then you had to spend it.
In remedy of the situation, his absently-saved five dollar bill was placed in a small office envelope, along with the carefully-clipped and filled-out ad, and dropped into the mailbox. It summarily disintegrated into the postal system, never to be seen again. But after he'd finally received the package from the NovelCo Corporation, there was little surprise or celebration. He opened the box nonchalantly, and discovered his long-forgotten prize with a mild taste of nostalgia. Wasting no time (though acting mostly in boredom and instinctual curiosity rather than excitement), he drew it to his lips to bleat out a test of the item.
There'd been a large part of him, the more reflexive part of his brain, expecting a noise. Instead it was like walking off a porch stoop and expecting to step down, but then the shoe hits pavement about twelve inches too soon. The only sound escaping was that of his breath. Dumbly, he'd held it to his eyes, and inspected it. As the child could lay no claim toward being an expert on whistle-assembly, and had no idea in general about how they worked at all, he concluded that the whistle was fine, and realized that he cannot, unfortunately, hear all the same things a dog can (though the reasons behind that mystery were eluding him as well).
Later that day, Troy had carried it in his pocket with him to his friend Harold's. Harold, a brother among four who lived in a small apartment uptown, had no dog either. He did, however, own a grey tabby cat. They'd only tooted the silent tin whistle a few times before the animal noticeably panicked at it. Allegedly, this magical device could cross the species-boundaries, and work on any furry companion. Upon discovery of this phenomenon, the boys had chased the poor animal all over the house, causing it to shudder and scramble away frenetically with every blow. Harold had eventually cornered his pet between the sofa and the wall, and kept whistling, grinning around the mouthpiece in a deranged fashion, reveling in the gooey-sweet schadenfreude. Troy began to feel sympathy for the animal's fear-bloated expression, and he asked Harold to cut it out. The ginger-haired beast then turned to Troy, and, instead of retorting, blew the whistle with all his might right into Troy's ear.
There wasn't an audible noise, but there was a presence of noise. He had felt the pressure against his eardrum, and it had bounced around in his head. It had felt like hearing Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song for the first time again, full blast, in the basement of Cindy Wakeman's house. A sudden effusion of riffing claxons hammering out an exhilarating treble, drowning out everything else in a fleeting vacuum of total silence. And yet, Harold felt absolutely nothing. He was both confused and amused by his friend's strange reaction. The cat scrambled away at last, and Troy stumbled back, his brain lurching to pick up the pieces in a hurry.
That is what he was to Blind Thomas. A deafening, chimerical warble. Invisible sound waves, lapping against the shores of the vagabond's ear, but not washing up anything intelligible. This realization had solidified Troy in a way. It was important because he knew at that point that he, in fact, existed.
A fat pad of butter slid into the man's line of vision. A checkerboard strip ran along one lumpy side, and distended taillights dotting the back brightened as the corpulent thing rumbled to a halt on the street corner. A door opened, and a trim, black umbrella unfurled, followed by an equally trim man in an equally black suit. He fumbled with his wallet as he tried to stuff it back into his breast pocket. Now was as good a time as any to leave. Troy shuffled in and squeezed behind the gentleman before the taxi door could slam shut.
If you're trying to get nowhere in particular, you may as well try to get there quickly.
