The Second Person

One Night at "The Safari"

2009-10-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

In a foreign bar, that’s much too dark,
he feels as if his ears might fall off.

A group of locals seem to be taunting him,
and if he had any clue what they were saying,
he might take some sort of hero action, such as
pouring a drink all over all of their shoes.

But he doesn’t, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t really care.

He spends the next several hours drinking tall glasses of
something that’s taste and metabolic reaction is
utterly unknowable to him, but he sees no reason
to stop drinking especially considering that
more just keep appearing in front of him.

The group of locals keep up their nonsense,
still seemingly at his expense,
when through a weird turn of syllables,
he misinterprets what one is saying
in their own native tongue, to be:
“He should just jump off a house”.

Having entirely too many of these liquids
filling his blood with something like
erratically blinking Christmas tree lights,
he makes it known, in no uncertain terms that
he'd like the sentence repeated.

They instantly become silent until one says,
(again in his own native tongue) something which
he misinterprets as “The attic. Now the attic”.

But in fact, it had the verbal tone more like:
“Easy old-timer, we’re just having some fun
completely unrelated to you and your
undeniably obvious troubles.”

Unfortunately, one of things he’s trying to forget
by drinking this liquid is his son’s tragic death.

Suddenly the drop that he didn’t witness is
recreated, in full color, right before his eyes, and the
whole thing sounded like the chips of someone
having a very good night going “all in” during
a high-stakes poker game, but only a hundred times louder.

Once this unwanted cinematic has completed
he returns to the foreign bar.

He is seeing beet red and awkwardly
steps “out” of his bar stool and confronts the men.

He spews a heated tirade at them (in a language
that even he doesn’t understand at this point)
only to have them sadly repeat “the attic”
over and over and over again, meaning him no harm.

He can longer take it and for the first time since the war,
he takes a swing at the nearest man with all he’s got.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), he’s a good 3 feet away from them,
and the follow-through of this unlanded punch,
spins him around violently and he loses his balance, falls
and brutally hits his head on the bar railing.

He hears the sound of the ocean.

The collective of men, stand over him sadly, afraid to move him
because of his convulsions and the rapidly increasing pool of blood
steadily threatening their shoes.

After the barkeep calls an ambulance, he rushes to him,
and shoos the group of men away to somberly continue
their conversation, which was actually about the televised
soccer match, on the ancient bar TV, directly above his head.

The ambulance takes a full 30 minutes to make it to the bar,
because, as the barkeep later finds out,
this sort of thing is happening all across the city.

Her sneeze was so cute that....

2009-06-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

After the incident on the bus but before he can be arrested and before the whole thing finally ends, he was interviewed by a local news team. Due to foreign nature of the habitat, he has no idea exactly what questions they’re asking, but he figures that since no one in the news has ever asked any new questions and no one every gives any new responses, he believes he has a good enough idea of what is expected of him to follow the line of questioning.

Unfortunately, this being a sensational and perhaps non-existent news crew (his vision is now particularly blurred and his glasses flew into the fountain), they take incredible liberties with what he actually says versus what is broadcast. In their defense, he didn’t give them much to work with (or perhaps entirely too much to work with), due to the shock of the incident and his behavior that caused it. This coupled with the rapidly diminishing returns when attempting extractions of data from the logic and memory quadrants of his brain leads to the ensuing confusion which angers absolutely everyone in the vicinity.

The resulting audio/visual transmission sounded like the moon being rolled down a busy street in New York City for 5 seconds and after the piece aired, the whole town wanted him dead but by then he was long gone, in more ways than one.

Only the items below in bold made it to the final version in transcript form since the video cannot be located at the station, on Earth or anywhere else and never could be:

Answer: “Boy, I don’t know. It’s a tragic and unfortunate event that I wish could have been avoided. No one likes to see this type of thing happen, especially with such a high volume of people involved. Whatever my actions were which led to this tragedy, if any, I promise I would accept full responsibility, if what just happened here was at all apparent to me. I’m sure I couldn’t be more sorry. If that’s appropriate.

Answer: “Now that I think about it, perhaps what happened was the driver had to sneeze and he or she asked me to hold the wheel for a second to avoid a potential collision, but in actuality it was I who needed to sneeze which was what caused the crash. That certainly seems viable to me.”

Answer: “No sir, I was not and no ma’am, that is not so. I promise you both that this was not an attempt at being cute especially given that the outcome appears to be so ghastly. Do you see my glasses?”

Answer: “I obviously can’t speak on their behalf, but maybe one of your weathermen can confirm if perhaps the elements were involved?”

Answer: “True. The weather is as clear as the inside of waiting room. I retract my previous answer. Is that allowed?”

Answer: “In a word, ‘yes’. I hope that’s the sort of response you wanted. I couldn’t understand that question whatsoever.”

Answer: “Who are you talking to now? Me still? If so, that sounds like the same thing you just asked which I already answered “yes” without even knowing the question. This seems like overkill to me. You know what, maybe you should talk to that girl over there in the lab coat. In my experience that implies a higher level of reason that I’m currently able to give. Jesus, she appears to be evaporating.”

Right then, a plane or helicopter flies overhead and the static sirens draw closer, sounding like a computer on wheels. The volume going from low to high, right on schedule.

For Your Safety

2009-06-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

When in the vicinity of a conversation where the opening remarks consist of one person saying to another: "No one here is claiming you're not a scumbag.", it's always a good idea to take note of any and all potential exits.

This includes windows, sir.

Local Celebrity

2009-05-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

Standing in line at an ancient, brown pharmacy to spend what he wrongly believes is the last of his money on dental adhesive; he notices that the three magazines behind the counter each have his face featured prominently on the covers, exploding with floating cartoon bubbles with text in an unknowable language. Beneath the UPC are translated footnotes, but they are small in size and he doesn’t think to check his pocket for his reading glasses, which doesn’t matter because they’re not there yet.

He’s understandably unsettled as he has the vague feeling that magazines covers in this foreign land also serve as Wanted Posters (the static white background and bland photographic composition likely aided this misperception) and he has no memory of any wrongdoings. Without knowing it, his face distorts to seamlessly match the expression of crippling fear and horror displayed almost identically on each of the magazine covers.

His dentures almost fall out of his mouth.

Fortunately for him, soon after seeing these images his synapses fire backwards in an unsuccessful attempt at triggering a “fight or flight” response and he immediately forgets what his own face looks like and his fear is replaced with equally crippling sympathy for this poor bastard who obviously has no clue what he’s done wrong to warrant the Wanted Poster.

For no good reason, he pretends to have an extended coughing fit which is roundly ignored by the other pharmacy patrons.

The cause of his sudden celebrity is that the local media and a significant percentage of the population believe that he has literally fallen from the sky out of nowhere and from an unknowable distance, without sustaining any noticeable bodily harm.

Half of the media (and therefore half of the general population) believe him to be an angel sent from heaven and the other half, an aged Superhero with an outdated slapstick theme. A few others just think they're watching a movie.

The details of his miracle descent vary wildly in the media, but it is largely believed that he violently crashed to the earth mere feet from a science teacher who is attempting (with limited success, largely due to a severe speech impediment) to demonstrate to her uninterested students the dynamics behind water currents using a fountain in front of a train station.

The interviewed students all agree that this incident was “really cool” and that the man “just got up and went into the old haunted drug store” and that their teacher is “really weird”. One went so far as to call her “dumb”.

Fortunately for him, he makes it back to his room before being recognized; albeit without the dental adhesive which he dropped during a second coughing fit staged at the pharmacy exit.

By the time he leaves his room later in the afternoon any news of his ordeal is quickly replaced by a sensationalized piece on an elderly couple that walked around their house without speaking to each other for so long that they transformed into animated Fig Newtons.

His glasses finally fall into the fountain (long after any remaining crowd staring in wonder at the cartoonish indentation his body left in the earth has dispersed) and are back in his inside coat pocket, along with his wallet which will prove to be all too useful in the coming days.

His daughter (who made the wallet in shop class) is in the train station and even she doesn’t know why yet.

The Complete "Forgiving Steve"

2009-03-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Before his sudden arrival, there hadn’t been a single recorded act of violence in 18 years, not since a security was knocked to the ground (albeit inadvertently) during a theft in The Blueprint Chamber of City Hall.

Suddenly, it seems that regular citizens can’t punch each other fast enough.

A grocery store manager was chased into the parking lot and nearly lynched for raising the price of bulk celery by two cents; a regular yearly increase that had always previously gone unnoticed.

Old women trip children with their canes; young men throw their shoes at unattractive women; policemen fall victim to snowballs kept through the winter in basement freezers at a rate previously employed only in active Arctic combat zones.

Christ, even innocent dogs were having their ears boxed by the small but tenacious homeless dwarf population.

While the city’s previous Black Market had thrived almost exclusively on bootleg phone conversations (including the wildly popular “The Complete Forgiving Steve” which shed more light on the human condition than one thousand cameras pointed at the exits of one thousand strip clubs), it has now been replaced by back-alley aspirin peddlers, car-trunk-novelty-football-helmet-merchants and implausible head trauma bandage dealers.

He is oblivious to the carnage all around him as he attempts to not step on the cracks of the sidewalk, absentmindedly whistling along to the song transmitting directly into his hearing aid:

“Here’s where the commercial would be,
If you were listening to the radio or watching TV.”

No One Comments

2009-01-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Before his sudden arrival, there hadn’t been a single recorded act of violence in over 18 years; not since a security guard was knocked to the ground (albeit inadvertently) during a theft in The Blueprint Chamber of City Hall.

Whatever his advent brought, however he made the wind go wrong, all the harmony of the city was gone in an instant. Suddenly it seems that these citizens can’t punch each other fast or hard enough!

A local produce manager is chased into the grocery store parking lot and nearly lynched for raising the price of bulk celery by two cents; a regular yearly increase that had seemingly always gone unnoticed.

Old women trip children with their canes; young men throw their shoes at unattractive women; policemen are ambushed with snowballs kept through the winter in basement freezers at a rate previously employed only in active combat zones, worlds away.

Christ, even innocent dogs were having their ears boxed by the small but tenacious homeless dwarf population.

While the city’s previous Black Market had thrived almost exclusively on bootleg phone conversations (including the wildly popular “The Complete Forgiving Steve” which shed more light on the human condition than one thousand cameras pointed at the exits of one thousand strip clubs), it has now been replaced by back-alley maximum strength aspirin peddlers, by-the-car-trunk-novelty-football-helmet-merchants and implausible head trauma bandage dealers.

He is oblivious to the carnage all around him as he tries to not hum along to the song transmitting directly into his hearing aid:

“Here’s where the commercial would be,
If you were listening to the radio or watching TV.”

Torque/Amphibious/Absent

2008-12-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

When he wakes again, he is flat on his back and there is a strange doctor standing over him and there is air everywhere, but they’re not inside.

They aren’t even in a room yet and the doctor smells like digested mouthwash.

The walls spring up, one at a time all around him and the doctor doesn’t seem to notice.

Suddenly, his dead daughter is in the “room” and appears to be asking the doctor questions in a tone he is unable to make out.

He attempts to speak to her but words evade him, as if it wasn’t even possible in the first place. He is happy to see that the effects of her collision with the train are not evident in this incarnation. Now he can barely see her.

In the hallway, an elderly man in a lab coat is slowly and laboriously carrying an unfair armful of bricks. His lab coat is stained with rust and it takes him several minutes to fully pass.

His doctor gestures towards him and begins using terms that seem medically inappropriate:

”Torque”

“Amphibious”

“Absent”

His daughter nods solemnly and she still hasn’t even made eye contact with her father, as if it wasn’t even possible in the first place.

In the hallway, a man seemingly in the same predicament as him leaves his room in a wheelchair and is immediately struck by an oncoming car. Nobody cares.

As quickly as she came, his daughter disappears and his doctor finally addresses him directly although his words sound like both men are on opposite ends of a collapsing coal mine:

”My beautiful Irish bride, cut cleanly in two”.

When the doctor senses his confusion, he leans over him and their faces are inches apart. The smell of the mouthwash is so overwhelming that he can’t tell if the doctor is telling him that the next step will require need a new “pair of shoes” or a “parachute”.

On his way out, the doctor turns off the lights which was a simply terrifying thing to do. There is not a bit of light in the room, and all is silent. He feels as if he’s back in the womb.

Luckily, a nurse soon enters and turns the light back on as she wheels in the man who was just struck by the car in the hallway.

He is wearing a full body cast made out of old blueprints which appear to be an outline of the most perfect and complicated and impossible veins a human body has ever known.

According to the diagram just above his navel, his blood is quickly filling up an underground parking garage.

Regarding Dutch Angles

2008-11-25T10:30:00.000-08:00

For reasons currently unknown, on
October 12th, you began taking the medication.

It's unclear whether or not you are or will become aware
of the fact that the only affect of this medication
is a complete inability to ever remember having taken it.

It is equally unclear where, exactly, you got these pills,
but, if you look, your name is plainly printed on the label.

The primary side effect you have noticed to date is
an increasing distrust of those around you since it's clear
that someone is screwing around with your pills.

{It's important to note that at this very moment he is participating in his first Psychic Reading (why or how he selected and received this reading from a doctor working on a suspended medical license will never be known).

Because of this fact, it is understandable that he will treat the session as whole, and the words of the “psychic” specifically as a Directive.}

But in addition, you will soon, or have already experienced the following side effects:

• Increased thoughts relating to the construction of business parks.
• Increased urination due to substantially increased liquid-based compulsions
• A decrease in receivable (or at least decipherable) phone calls
• An almost palpable sense that you're constantly being followed by a ghost of your exact age

Not to mention the looping segment
Of a chorus of a likely non-existent song
That you can't get out of your head:

"First things first,
Let's call you a hearse."

With Our Apologies

2008-11-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

It’s very late and he can’t sleep
because his new friend is standing
outside his hotel door loudly
describing what chocolate tastes like.

His pleas of "I know. I've had it!"
go entirely ignored as he pretends
not to notice what's projected on the
wall from the streetlamp outside his low window.

"Sir, you're almost all gone."

The Ballad of the One-Eared Boy

2008-11-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

In front of a supermarket in another country altogether,
a careless woman puts her car in reverse without looking
and hits a man just out of the exit toting two bags of fruit.

He screams something real loud, slowly gets up
and throws a lemon at the window of the supermarket.

The woman slowly gets out of her car and her mouth is open
and she just stands there like a moron saying nothing.

It appears that the man is not too badly hurt
and he limps away with an awful look on his face
and never looks at or says a thing to the woman
(as if he was expecting this one day, like he deserved it)

The woman never says word one.
Not even: “Sorry about that”.

The man takes a full hour to walk home
when it usually only takes less than half that time
because he is limping so badly.

In his sleep that night,
he dies for no reason related
to getting hit by the car
driven in reverse
by the careless woman.

This whole incident messed up the universe
surrounding the town for the whole night
and no one felt good, not at all.

The whole town could have been on fire for all they cared.

One guy even got so drunk that he started yelling:
“I am stupid and I hate my stupid life
and these blueprints are meaningless and stupid!”
so loud that he woke up his wife (who doesn’t love him any more )
but not his son because he was born with just one ear
and was sleeping with it squarely on the pillow.

A Whore in Holland

2008-11-24T19:13:00.000-08:00

Moments before his father died,
he asked his mother for forgiveness
for not only losing his mind so young
but for never finding it in his later years.

For whatever reason,
she did not accept his apology
even as his last breath slowly ascended to the attic
and hovered all above the neighborhood.

Instead she immediately began
knitting the neighbor woman a pair of socks
because she is a widow who lost
all of her children during childbirth
and yet still kept her sanity.

As you can imagine, his mother's insult really
threw his father into the afterlife with a bang.

To this day, he's still so overwhelming angry,
that he regularly haunts a whore in Holland
hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact
that he had nothing to do with her "pre-death"
and she did nothing deserving of being haunted.

(In fact, they would both agree that,
scientifically and socially speaking,
she was regularly providing
an invaluable kindness to men
who are now and will surely remain
unaccustomed to feminine benevolence.)

At the end, it got so out of hand that he even
had the audacity to repeatedly spell it out for her,
in shadows and sunlight on the kitchen floor,
effectively ruining a possible ending:

"A mother has no metaphysical bond with her child."

The whore, who has likely seen it all,
even had the audacity to successfully
become the same exact woman as his wife
and ruthlessly ignore this clue entirely.

His son saw the whole thing then as a boy,
and he sees the whole thing now
as he unsuccessfully attempts to not become
the same exact man as his father.

But, for now at least he's haunting the whore
from the right side of the grave.

In the Early Years, Right After the War

2008-11-24T19:11:00.001-08:00

In the Early Years, Right After the War

In the early years, right after the war,
he'd spend his downtime in the winter
turning the mountain of snow in the front yard
into glaciers with the garden hose.

Apparently his wife was unfazed by this,
but keep in mind that she spent the cold months
trying to come up with potato-based patentable
recipes for what were now being called "working mothers".

At night, they would both pretend that they weren't
half as drunk as they really were, while their son
(not of his seed or her egg), slept in the room closest to the attic
and dreamt exclusively in numbers.