/yesod

Tag: suburbs

  • fragments

    …a long bodied cat, muscular and lean, stalks through the room — insane eyes, gaping mouth drooling as it swivels its head from side to side . . . its long gray fur matted and ragged, trailing after it in the air…

    …I turn and see the electrical plug floating in the air before my face, the cord dangling. With a start, I snatch it from the grasp of the unseen hand and shudder.

    I lay it down on the bedspread and turn to the nightstand. When I turn back the plug is floating there again. I dart my hand out and grab where the wrist would be, feeling something unseen struggle against me.

    I let it go, fascinated and supremely creeped out. Objects on a nearby shelf rattle as something passes around the room. The lamp overhead swings and I can see, in my mind’s eye, something there circling overhead — a faceted, multicolor crystalline rat. Waves of malign hate pour off of it.

    I command it to appear, my voice full of authority and strength.

    Unable to disobey, the creature shimmers into view — altering its form, taking a friendly cartoon shape as though made out of balloons.

    I grasp it in one hand and command it again, demanding it shed its false form and reveal itself for what it truly is.

    It struggles against my hand and the slow pull of my voice, drawing it out, forcing it into a form I recognize…

    … I wander through the modular home, amazed that I’d forgotten we bought it just in case the new house didn’t work out. And in the back bedroom something terrible and sad lies under a sheet on the top bunk…

  • cages

    …passing through one of the seedier parts of town, I stop off to visit with an old friend from college. I’m surprised to find him here, in such strained circumstances.

    We sit out on his little patch of front yard and chat for a bit, but it quickly grows tiresome. He’s consumed by self-involved bitterness about the past and where his path in life has led him.

    Looking for any point to distract the conversation, I mention that one of our common college friends — a guy I’ve known since junior high — has died, at a very young age. Not too much of a surprise, I explain. He ate and drank like a teenager.

    Soon enough I make my excuses and my escape, leaving my friend to sit alone in his aluminum lawn chair inside the little cage of chain link surrounding his house.

    It’s a relief.