I, wrought. Rotting. Rolled into year 22 last April, can you believe it? Madhat crazy 19 of those years, can’t recall the rest—everybody dies somehow. Sparkle-flash lights my eyes each time I blink, and they’d be prettylooking if it wasn’t an aneurysm. Expanding consciousness, maybe. I see the 4th of July, looking into the sparkler’s zip-zap burn, and I told this to Paul, my roommateboyfriend, but he’s a Brit, doesn’t celebrate Independence, doesn’t believe I see sparkles, either.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Something in me feels funny, I just don’t know what,” I say.
See, what I think, I’ve gotta misfired circuit, that’s what I’m seein’. Flickering lights goin’ in and out. Only problem is, electricians’ are too damn finicky. Any cattier, and I’d call ‘em all stingy sonsabitches, but I’m not that catty, and so they’re all bastards my ma and Father never afforded me.
“Doc’s on holiday,” I always say. I’d like to go be examined by a professional, Head to toetag, but well I just don’t have that kind of cash. For now, I and dr.web are tryin’ fix me up in the home garage- makeshiftdo.
GODAM my neck, hurts. Something’s really wrong with me this time. My Head’s all drooped over to the left, makin’ my sinister eye and ear too lazy to hear or see evil-good. If I turn my Head westward towards the sunset, I can’t hear a thing. Southern, Sudden Death. It’s not death like people say, it’s deaf. How long does it take to arrive at deafness?
Reminds me, Paul came bearing me a story today about a blind man he bumped into on Easter Day, said it was a synchronicity, since he’d been reading Cathedral. Just like him to think it’s a sign seated just beyond the gaze of a blind man, a sign that he was keen ‘nough to see.
The bathroom mirror of God’s eternal rest house shows I gotta bend in my neck, that pain, manifest it just above the shoulder, slithering down the spine bump-bump-bump, into Shakti’s agape, Godhelpme.
She’s pissed now, nobody likes a deceptive kiss, and in that mirror, I age. Dark hair, faded-out turns into frazzled frays around the frame of my startled doe-face, exacerbated palepale sparkle eyes, an’d here I start to panic. Rigormortis, ‘bout 12 more hours ‘til I’m back to a pumpkin, and I can see it now. My p’tite bust popped, emptied out funbags now flat on my torso, is that normal?
“Nononono.”
I am ill, elderly reflection of me standing there, youth is just a memory now. Was it the two, maybe 3, hours in bathtub holy water, dried my young out like a prune? Prune juice is awful, my bodyimage gone hideous. Is this goodnight? I feel cold; cold inside, cold out. Prune juice’ll do that to you.
”Hey Paul, turn off the air, will ya? I’m in an icebox!” I say that to him, even though the words are hard, my voices fragile, myself is weak.
“Yeah,” he says, and not a word more. He doesn’t like being around the dead, who can blame him. That man’s got Mary holding roses round his neck and finger, charmsafe from whirlpool of rain-wrapped tornado; why risk hail-halting Ava Maria now? Devil get behind me Paul says, and we all listen. Even my sinister ear can hear that.
Wowbegone but the woe still lingers, lurking in a black hood, Grimm coming in to takeover for Fairy Godmom.
“Noo!” I cry out, childlike, clinging to mom’s hip on the last day as much as the first. But listens shenot, unemotioned by the changing hands. Made a wish ungranted at 11:11, now the last man sings in midnight’s quartet. Memento mori, clock reads.
Paul, saintlike man, walks into the bathroom looking for my howling, steps right on my toes, as I’m lying on the floor, preparing.
“I didn’t see you there, are you okay?”
“caleemanakietelpronenisk,” I say, and I can’t say anything else. Nodnot, I winkwince at him, and whatdoyaknow, the kid’s keen. Sign, he sees.
“puulsss,” I mutterhiss out with the exhale. Hesychasm, orthodox gibberish written in the books. Is this the part where my I kneel while my tongue confesses? Paul, heartofgold, hears not a heart turning to stone, forgets to read me my habeas corpus; does God value Miranda’s rights? Well, he likes all her hairs, so he must lover as much as Uranus.
My body can’t feel the sensation of the rug on which I’m laying, flatbacked against the floor. Pushing my eyes down since I can’t raise the dead, I see my toes are already fading. Coldfeeling, bloodless-colored like a corpse, man I swear I’ve never seen ‘em that way before. I worry, a lot I worry, if not about the lifelack of my feet, then the hypothermic hue of my lips, but this time I think it’s really happening.
I’ll mourn the sunrise, say goodnight to my family for me, it’s Sun’s day morn and I am no more.
Metarealist Parables 