Muzzy, thick, where’s the here blanket, still so they’re HERE tired want GET UP
They’re here. It’s dark. A cold shock and he’s awake; he can move nothing but his eyes.
“We don’t blame you any longer,” sighs Darlene heavily. “We understand. You have to lie, and it’s not your fault.”
“But we can’t have you lying about us anymore,” says Salem, “now can we?”
“You’ll tell no more filthy lies.” Darlene smiles, taps her lips. “No more. Ever again.”
Salem is threading a needle.
Rob’s jaw is holding itself shut, so tight his teeth creak. He’d scream if he could.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Bashford Manor’s dying, painfully, the way most large buildings die: long before anyone gets around to imploding it, the reversed-out missing logos of empty stores look like whimpers for lost children.
Half mall, half pseudogothic mansion, it looks like a Place You Don’t Go. One or two establishments hang on by their regulars, but nobody cleans the windows and the graffiti’s a solid mass. It’s all dark at night. The streetlights are becoming spidery naked trees.
Rob finds it around a dark corner, shining from under a fire door: a glow. Somebody’s in there.
He pushes it open with a stick.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Perhaps he has it in him. He notices her, at least, and where and how she walks.
She sees so many people, walking, and portents cascade off her, and no one looks. She wants that, in this world, but she’s tired: she needs someone to teach, and that someone must be able to see her as she truly is.
Finally, one Monday she snaps her fingers and whispers, and two trolleys cross before her: a sure sign, an omen, to reveal her in her full glory at last.
She’s disappointed. He’s not the right one: Grimacing Woman is all he sees.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Rob could set his clock by Grimacing Woman. Every day he comes to the bus stop, he can measure how early or late he is by her distance from the corner. She must plod by, every day, at a perfectly constant speed.
Today when he gets to the stop, two trolleys cross in the intersection, parallel to each other and perpendicular to him. They cross so perfectly that they have to be significant of something, like curtains, like the opening of an Austin Powers musical number.
There’s only Grimacing Woman on the other side, though, when they clear. He’s early today.
