Sunday, December 6, 2009

skit #90: the two

So you can put them into two categories. Err, I mean, there's more, but. Well, you know how rules always have gaps in their smiles.

You got the obsolete traditional types, who go around looking all regularly hideous. Really, most of those got killed way back when. You know, knights and exorcists and whoever. People can barely tolerate spiders, and even they have exterminators. No one talks about jabberwockies anymore. So don't worry about all the ugly monsters.

But, yeah. Then you got the newer-type clever monsters, who go around looking like people. Real regular-type people. Real sly. I figure there's a whole rude zoo of those monsters right under the skin of people you see every darn day. Engineers and aunts and veterinarians and clarinetists -- yeah, anyone, maybe, doesn't matter who. Sometimes the windows to their soul look all smudged up.

This ain't all bad. There's an elegance to this dichotomy. If your monster looks like a person, then you don't really have to worry about being gobbled up, because people don't have massive jaws and fangs. But if your monster looks like a monster -- well, no one's going to jail you for destroying some regularly hideous-type monster.

Huh? Yeah, a few. I've tangled with my share of monsters before. Lost these six fingers to the whorl worms of Patagonia. Went all higgledy-piggledy in my ladyparts. Yeah, I've got a few wriggled up inside me. Parasites -- the whorl worms of Patagonia. These things don't really turn me into a monster, per se. They just eat my flesh and reconstitute my likeness with wormflesh. So some whorlwormy chap will be doing wrong in my name. Or, who knows, maybe I'm doing good in his name.

Hell, even had someone spot me for a monster. They chased me down all of 32nd Street with a shotgun. No way you can really disprove it, neither. Just have to steer clear of them. But that's what I mean, I guess. The sly monsters look just like people. But, heh, maybe you're taking advice from a monster.

Well, yeah. Then there's three, technically.

Those third ones are the worst monsters. Don't look like anything. More abstract. A misplaced shadow. Awkward and protracted eye contact. A painfully trite malaise. Thoughts of aberrant geometries. Existential hangnails. The kind of monster you can never fight, can never dispel. That inauspicious happenstance that can never be confronted or defined. When something feels wrong.

But. Those have been around for a while. Best to stick to the two.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

skit #89: the moon

The night swallows desperately as the midnight express lodges in its throat like an unpalatable placebo. The coach bus slows and stops. White noise wafts from the coastline waves and the constellations make promises of stale fates. With the bus stopped, the night would be still, but acrid smoke from the engine provokes its passengers to disembark.

But not Erma. She remains on the bus. Erma is supposed to be somewhere.
She does not know where, or even that there was a particular somewhere to be, but she could have been there nonetheless. She could have undergone the latent thing was supposed to happen to her. She stays on the bus even though it will not move. The smoke makes Erma's eyes water, but that's about it.

The passengers shiver in the coastal drizzle, occupying themselves by speculating idly or raging futilely. The driver, though competent and affable, bears no hope of repairing the bus. Everyone senses this -- the passengers, the driver, the bus, the smoke, the constellations, and Erma.

The smoke dissipates as the drizzle becomes heavier rain. Everyone returns to the bus. A repair truck finally arrives, but the mechanic will have to special order the damaged component. An opportunistic motel begins ferrying passengers to its pay-per-hour rooms until its capacity fills. Erma remains on the bus. The driver announces his company will cover any bills 'within reason'. The repair truck leaves until tomorrow afternoon.

Erma can't sleep, so she stares out the plexiglas window. The garish neon cursive spelling 'No Vacancy' mutes the subtle stars, giving the vain moon a full stage. The moon shines white, then red, then white. Clouds fog the scene, snoring upsets the serenity. No one cares about a lunar eclipse, not even Erma.

The bus resumes its course tomorrow evening. The mechanic is paid. The driver is competent. The motel has vacancies. The passengers are late. The moon is white. The thing is unknowable. Erma is supposed to be somewhere.