Laura's Story

Waves. Sometimes things propagate as waves. She found this moth(rat?)-eaten manual fromma time not ours that mentioned this. That was before the invaders came. It may as well be centuries ago. There were stores that sold candies then. Wrapped in cellophanes of every color of the rainbow. What I'd give for something sweet now... The sky is grey. Its always a shade of grey now. Sometimes lighter, during the day, I guess, orran ashen smeared easel offan irrational pantheon of uncaring gods and goddesses. We've been walking in what we assume is the same direction for at least two weeks. Following the river, keeping it to our left. At least we know we're not walking in circles. There's always an unnatural sound, like a sweeping broom across the tiled entranceway to Hell, that is present over the rushing water. Maybe that's why we stay close to the flowing - it almost blocks out the new world we have found ourselves in. Some semblance offa documentary on nature we might have seen when young and entertainment and learning were possibilities. There aren't many animals anymore. The ones that catch our peripherals are as ashen as the sky. Funny. I don't recall seeing foxes before; not in person. How long have we really been picking our way along this rocky terrain? Laura is ahead of me, carrying a long bamboo walking stick. Sometimes when I lie and smile I tell her that's sposta help one walk. She lies and smiles back that of course its helping her walk - if I keep it horizontal it functions assif I'm onna tightrope - look, I'm inching between downtown skyscrapers! An explosion in the distance, probably building sized. Sounds don't travel as far as they used to. All the greyness that came with Them is heavy, a wet blanket on the Earth, makes breathing a chore if one pays attention. The last buildings we saw were three-quarters immersed in the river. What is this body of water called? How does one forget what the local river is named? The same way one forgets what one's first car was, or where one's first kiss took place. Drive-in? Couch? Under bleachers? The explosion must be far enough to not be an immediate concern. No underfoot rumblings. We barely look up, in fact. We decided that attempting to track our progress in terms of direction was boring and pointless. Its not assif there issa goal we're reaching, a dot onna map that hassa printed name next tooit. In fact, the farther away we stay from those former dots on maps the better. Out here in the Great Big f*****g State Park of Wherever The f**k We Are its peaceful enough. No former right angles to remind us that there are no straight lines in nature. Can't remember the last time I waited forra red light. I'm catching up to Laura, she's crouching, long stick still horizontal, picking at something on or in the ground with her sawtoothed machete. There's no movement in the treeline except the branches and leaves themselves. Birds are almost non-existent now. I swear I don't ever recall seeing a fox in the flesh before, now they're the most common animal besides us. As I reach the limestone platform she spins, triumphant, see-I-told-you-the-stick-works, and holds out a bottle of Jamaican Red Stripe, looking new and shiny. Her excavation has unearthed a blue and white Igloo cooler chest from between boulders. Its full of formerly imported beers, a couple of red wax-encased wheels of cheese and luckily unopened large packets of bison jerky. Back when people milled like ants, endlessly constructing ventilation tunnels and waste depositories, they believed things. They had up to the minute holy documents crisscrossed with squiggly imaginary lines, like all holy documents. Wherever one found oneself in relation to the imaginary lines denoted certain realities. Foxes are more common than people now. Somewhere Walt Disney is not feeling irony. Sometimes those holy imaginary lines were rivers. People's most common trait was laziness. I remember viewing a satellite picture of Earth, and it seemed the only blue water left was that being fed the indigo stain for denim inna polluted tributary adjacent in what was China. So much holiness. When the need arose for things bigger than us to assist, those holy worshipped things, they remained as invisible and ineffectual as ever. The larger than our imaginations entities that did show themselves remained indifferent to our collective sigils and crossed hearts. These giants brought with them a new Art, a new way to draw lines on maps, and new definitions of what maps were. Blue is still the least common color of water, brown and red being much more favored. Faces old and young stare accusingly from just beneath the surface tensions now, no matter what the hue of the liquid. The Earth is somehow a quieter marble now, explosions less frequent. If one were being charitable one could say the new, gigantic forms had brought peace, finally, at last. The answers to so many prayers. Light pollution is now an antiquated term. Sagan's billions and billions twinkle sparkle flash and swoosh above our heads now if our relative elevation to the sea is great enough. I am no eidetic astrologer, but Laura agrees that Orion's belt and Betelgeuse are no longer where they were. Or maybe obscured by clarity. Perhaps eventually we'll draw new imaginary lines in the night grey and link humanistic tragedies to them. That one's Boffo, the legendary fox masturbator, see his right hand has six fingers? And there's Yourmom, still popular as ever. Some of the stellar regions make audible strings of intermittent noises, attempting to ask our obsolete fax machines tooa matinee. At least they're not selling us used cars yet. I wonder, would that make us scramble nowhere faster or drag our feet? The dead do not walk the globe. Hooded skeletons do not ride pale horses in search of wheat fields. It is possible something with many arms dances to an i***t piper. We smoke 'em if we got 'em, and we usually do. Drugs were big business, and are more commonly laying around than cans of cranberry sauce. They brought peace on Earth with Them, and an end to poverty, however one measures it. And they didn't even demand praise. We haven't seen any other people in at least two weeks. Not alive, anyway. Most of the corpses are floating in pieces unidentifiable down past us. Any former homes by the waterfront have been abandoned. Proximity to the new vast creatures does something to the thought processes. Makes the electrons jump track and wind up in the wrong brain receptors. They're not eating us. They're not even interacting with humanity unless we en masse attack them. Nukes were used. That was the last Laura and I heard. The largest groups of people we've seen were four, across the river. They made no sign of recognition, no waves or yells. A mutual noticing. They were headed the way we came, on the other side. We've stopped at a two story home with a boatless dock. A fire has turned the former garage into ash, but the adjacent kitchen and walk-in pantry is still full of groceries. Sandwich creme cookies with evaporated milk on the master bedroom deck. Sheets still smell like scented detergent and the water still gurgles from the faucets when they're turned. No electricity. Those electrons don't do the same things either. The long drive leading up to the structure is buried under massive fallen pines. Debris clogs the river itself, using a boat seemed useless, as if there was a destination to speed away to. Laura calls it " Fort mumbleblarrg " , exhaustedly burying her head in a couch cushion laid out on the deck. I stuff more cookies between my teeth. The view provided of the terrain from the deck looks like an angry child shook the ant farm, and bored, tossed it away inna drainage ditch outside a seafood buffet inna resort town. My skin imagines it has been coated in egg and floured batter several times. Shaking the sludge off my head I collapse on the unmade bed by the sliding glass, very seriously stained doors. [ they severed the hands that's what the Spaniards did. Halberded piles palms up fires not cauterizing, smudging glints of spittled grin thick lenses calloused fingers zipping up weatherbeaten blood, from not yet a teenager cotton briars, green bitterness whens please not again] Fort Mumbleblarrg seems as good as any place to experience intense hallucinations and/or time slips and/or simultaneous dimensional realities. It has cookies. After dragging all the usable foodstuffage up to the master bedroom suite atop the remnants of the wooded structure and making use of the handily, almost obscenely organized tools to actually um, fortify the narrow stairwell, we immediately crash near comatose for days, ingesting sugars and fats like there were supermarkets with humming freezer sections on every city intersection. This place even has a wine cellar, a real one, not a glass doored cabinet. I am almost disappointed there is no cask of Amontillado. On the fourth day another explosion, still far enough to not feel blasted heat or earthquaking floorboards, but it trails along with it a visible atmospheric channel that spins off like the arm offa hurricane. For hours all the colors in the spectrum become grimy, unctuous, the view from the bottom of a fast food fryer overdue for straining. Nausea sets in during and afterward. All offa sudden being onna carpet is the same as lying face down inna two inch deep tray of cultivated maggots, complete with crawling movements up the walls and greenish-grey waves lighting up the flatscreen of the now-defunct television across from the bed. Huddled in the center, trying desperately not to touch or even look at the floor while convulsively emptying our bowels and stomachs, the mouldering lightshow starts to produce three dimensional effects, coming closer then sinking in far past the wall its mounted on. Blankness. Grey. Millipedes. Water still runs, still looks clear. All of the carpet gets torn out and heaved over the deck's railing, along with the sodden mattress. Mumbleblarrg wassa perfect title, man. From the deck a three foot wide stripe is clearly visible across the landscape. Straight from our perspective, disappearing into the horizon, a charred, still smoking narrow strip of burnt. Trees that formerly stood in its path are simply gone, not piles of twisted branch stubs and ash. Gouges in the limestone, an actual scraping it seems. Smell of overripe, rotting fruit, something exotic like ugli or dragon with an artificial sweetener aftertaste in the nostrils; acrid, bulbous decay accelerated by molecular science students proud of their work. Evidence of this is visible in the river itself - a darkened stripe underneath the waterflow which now eddies at the banks. Added to the evidence of former civilization already present in the water are the carcasses of fish, or fish-like creatures, at least. Its difficult to discern what the original shapes of the savagely torn chunks of flesh might have been. The entire column of moving water is black and brown and maroon and bright fire truck red. There issa small fire burning on the opposite shore. Impossible to tell what exactly, just a blur of burning. For the moment there is a wind, steady, away from us. Blessedly, away from us. Laura usedta tell stories about being born onna side offa river I was not. I was born on an Air Force base in Texas. This is not that river. It doesn't look familiar to either of us. We don't know what its called, or was called. I had lived in Texas for all but four of forty-three years. I have never seen a fox except on screens, maybe a billboard. Now they're like neighborhood dogs. The trees, the grasses, they're familiar, but not intimately so. What are all these foxes eating? What stopped eating all the foxes and let their population burgeon? Laura says since that last wave she has a scar missing. It was to the side of a bone in her wrist, she got it while working inna field with her mother assa child. I don't remember for sure - its not my wrist, but I believe her. Neither of us can relate to the other how we got here, and when we attempt it again the story breaks down at maybe a different point. The last memory we have that stays the same is that we were both inna friend's car driving up to the convenience store a mile from my parents' old trailer. Then... Even when telling our own stories over again they change. At least that's what the other person claims. There is plenty of packaged, industructable food left. Some of the vintages are over sixty years old. We start on those just because. I stick a sewing needle through one of the corks and float it inna bowl of water. It doesn't seem to do anything in particular, which means I've probably forgotten a step in compass making. Best as I can tell we're headed vaguely north. Absolutely nothing I have observed points definitively to that conclusion. For now this is as good a place as any. Contrary to most horror movie logic there are several battery powered devices fully charged, more or less, and picking up all kinds of stations. Allot of them are preprogrammed and safeguarded against any possibility that silence could happen, lest our listeners disappear. There are no live voices, though even the public station is replaying an interview with a United Nations ambassador intermittently with blocks of humming where the local station breaks would be. Neither of us recognize any of the station call letters or frequencies. Even the fifty thousand watt WOAI transmission is absent. Quickly we settle on the classical public broadcast, coming in surprisingly clear. It is the only one playing music without lyrics exclusively. It helps make all the alien noises more tolerable. When stars are visible focussing one's attention on a certain grouping will now cause them to actually respond - both with sounds and visual effects. Its not just our poor human senses - recordings on our phones document the phenomena in even greater detail. Clear enough skies to see past the grey are rare, but at least two infinite directions yield beautiful results. I name them after Greek sirens in my head, not wanting to be outwardly anymore pessimistic than the situation demands. Most stars are silent and stationary enough. For now. There is still one sun in the sky that seems to do the same thing it used to, even though its greyed out usually. Maybe tomorrow it will offer two scoops of raisins. And. Aspirin in the aftermath of wine. We've been here four or five days and just now notice that there are no identifying traces at all of who once lived here. No photos framed. No mail magnetted to the refrigerator door. No kids' homework, or children's toys at all. There are true crime and mystery novels. No religious items. There are also no clothes hanging in closets or folded in drawers. Like we interrupted the crew dressing the set. The audio stream changes from madrigals to Gregorian chants. Its still less memory invoking than pop songs of love gained and lost and s*x. We've noshed through most of the sugars and salts and fats and have begun opening cans of vegetables and beans. Laura reminds me she's a Mormon and I pick up the old argument that no, she is not. My father attended a seminary in Michigan to become a priest before he joined the Air Force assa chaplin and married a paranoid schizophrenic, what the Roman Catholic church labels a possession case officially. I like to get drunk and talk about religion and politics. When I carried a wallet it contained separate business cards for ghost and demon removal services. My reasoning being that demons are way more dangerous than the cranky old fartbag of Aunt Mabel bitching about your choice of cat food for Mr. Snuggles, and should be priced accordingly. My first official girlfriend assa teenager working at Wendy's wassa Mormon, so I have slightly more than a cursory familiarity of the doctrine. Worst girlfriend ever, by the way. Never kiss a girl who doesn't smoke. Its okay if she doesn't smoke anymore, but this advice, I contend, will not let one down if heeded. As the topic of baptizing ancestors breaches again the sky visible past the open sliding glass door abruptly shifts from grey to palish green. Notta seafoam orra seasick orra pea, but a shade reserved for floors of state mental hospitals, disinfectant ready and climbing the edges of the walls. There is something else that is different. Laura and I exchange searching looks, interrupted in our comfort food conversation. We sit staring at each other forra solid minute before knitting our eyebrows and proceeding out on the deck. The atmosphere is physically thicker past the doorframe. Not more humid - the air is cool and moist, but no more so than before. Heavier. Gravity is still a theory. Although we confidently launch rockets and probes and parasail we assa species are still uncertain as to whether gravity issa push orra pull. Gravity now feels like its the ocean, waves jostling in all directions. A propagating wave packet, my head insists. I can't hear the rushing sound of the river. At all. Nor the wind visibly moving the branches strung above. The radio is unaffected. I am not. The last thing I remember when I awake is opening my mouth, partially full of cooked peppered yellow squash, and screaming. Silently. [ thousand segmented legs crawling the monsters took her under cover of sunlight and treason I can't remember what she was wearing rough hewn metals jagged under nails into nerve-riddled flesh, rusted dirt filled channels you were there to nurture but instead you consumed until bloated and gaseous unstable at this temperature NO! claimed divinity with hives and fever, royal pink and chartreuse steaming exhalations horses breath they spasmed fits and palsy persperation to the soil which grew poisoned flowers from their tears the limb twisted before the hinged joint borne unto the Firmament unmade flutes whistling graveyard breezes sounds are vibrations sinusoidal dips and troughs and peaks and valleys how many decimalled hurts?] There issan aching in the back of my skull. No cartoon birds and stars halo. Rising from my face-up prone position on the freshly painted deck, Laura is first in my field of vision, back solidly pressed against the railing, her eyes wide and staring. Settling next to her while rubbing my nape, I dig in my pocket and fish out Ann's antique silver cigarette case. Taking two Camels out I offer one widdershins, quickly accepted. The black and gold lazer etched Zippo fails to click when struck but lights both. Baroque woodwinds and harpsichord is quarteting through the filthy sliding glass doors. It is the only sound. I dreamt of my daughter Kallisti. I have no idea where she is or if she is. Burnt ash drops without crackles, being shaken off by my trembling lips. Hot tears are streaming down, blurring the soundless vista with eloquent soundtrack. I haven't seen Kallisti since she was eight. She would be ten now. Her mother abandoned us when she was two anda half, chasing h****n and cocaine with p**********n and psychopathic apathy. I don't remember dropping the finished butt or crawling to the pallet on the floor underneath the speakers. Batteries still holding out. Harpsichord and oboes give way to four cellos, dirge. Its suiting of the moment. Red wine has not helped the aching of my head. Laura's face is turned from my view, surveying silent scenery fit forra hotel wall painting. This is where you could be instead of MotorLodge #164. There is no chocolate mint on your pillow. Do not use blacklights in the vicinity of your bedspread, please and thank you. End of song, end of conciousness. Floor shakes hard enough to propel me to my feet. Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is blasting through the speakers, but its too loud, absurdly loud, there's no way cones that size could make that much air move. f**k this. Quick steps and noiseless slamming of the glass door. Thankfully the music diminishes in volume somewhat with this action. Its nighttime now. Laura is standing at the railing, one hand gripping the wood with enough force to turn her knuckles white, the other solidly around the ornate neck offa wine bottle labelled in Portuguese. She turns her head, frowning, only slightly, acknowledging my presence, then returns her sentry's position to the heavens. Half of the grey is parted centrally, revealing the new map of burning stars. Tens or thousands of minutes later Wagner dissolves into what would have been a station break, now the amplified buzzing offan ultraviolet bug zapper with two dragonflies struck frying in the mesh. This allows the only other sounds audible through to our senses: sirens calling from beyond Earth, skyward. A sort of synthetic chime set, microtuned at random and played by feasting vultures onna weighted keyboard. There is something new this time - a long, lilting, occasionally harmonized chorus of voices drifting in and out from a different point of night than the chimes, almost sideways from the horizon. If it is a language it is none I recognize, though there are definitely parts repeating verse-chorus-verse. Many vowels, few consonants. Hours pass. The buzzing from the radio fades to nothingness leaving us with the calling of the stars. The chimes span about two octaves. The voices, if that's what they are, full spectrum. There are most certainly repeating themes, though mismashed between competing chorales. All of the voices are distinctly female, the epitome offan archtype of warrior class. A third distinct group sounds angrier than the first two, threatening. No, b***h, our dance moves slay your tired, weak-ass trots. Its beautiful, as much as it can be, but my ears are accustomed to atonality. Also very directional. The voices are coming from horizontal sources, maybe on the planet, while the chimes are beaming from a gyrating cluster of suns directly above our heads. I find that I don't care how my dehydrated body feels about this decision: I am getting as drunk as I can before a red graped woman's hand closes the staring eyes of my corpse. " There is nothing new under the sun " somebody said once. Probably a guy. That's the kind of smug bullshit men get quoted saying. f**k that guy. I'm glad he's dead. I hope it hurt the whole time. By all means, quote me on that. The darkness of night is lasting longer than it should. When I climb in the upstairs shower the water again thankfully runs clear. Its cold and wakes me up, though I'm still staggering drunk. Drinking in stomachfulls of water I emerge humming a companion piece to the concert around us. At least, I'm vibrating my throat and chest. It feels like what making sounds used to do. We've laid out couch cushions covering most of the deck and are observing. Writing onna legal pad witha pen screenprinted Al's plumbing, Laura says it feels like noon. We've been dosing off in turns. She suggests Father Alien instead of Mother Nature. Our three local groups of singers have played through at least two albums of repeating hits. I turned off the radio, though it didn't respond immediately, stubbornly buzzing at least an hour after the off command was issued. My vintage is 1973, something in French. Saltine crackers, spray cheese inna can. I keep thinking about Mitch Hedberg's joke about it glowing in the dark, every bite. The chimes have almost completely faded, along with the brightness and location of its point of emanation. Glee club is picking up the tempo, but seemingly content with their distant concert halls. When I heavily plop down the notepad is passed over. Two words: Foxes. Below. Laura is strategically stationed under the thick fringed vinyl umbrella that formerly stood in the center offa round glass table next tooa propane cookstove. On its side its functioning assa lean-to tent. Hanging my head over the railing, my eyes are greeted with twenty to thirty smaller shiny pairs staring back. Ashen grey and brownish-red foxes are doing much the same as we are, minus alcohol. Laura hands me a bag of marshmallows and we toss them down one by one. They look cute, smiling almost. I shiver. Laura tugs at my jacket and I join her on the other side of the lean-to. We stuff marshmallows in our ears, hoping we don't wake to find ants crawling, searching through our brains. Something is tickling my face and smells like bubblegum. Opening my sleepshut eyes I discover an orange fox on my chest, staring directly at me. It licks my nose several times and is instantly gone when a peal of gravelly smoker's laughter erupts from beside me. Some giant, probably taloned hand has turned the volume knob of the world back to the right again. Trees, river, that sweeping, scratching noise, all back. I haven't seen Laura happy, even briefly, like this since we found ourselves wandering. The little furry scamp ate the marshmallows out of her ears too, she says. For minutes it is easier to breathe, even with the obligatory cigarette smoke. Happiness is rare now, has been for years. Just a little reminds my body what its like to be alive. Lighter grey, occluded sky. Something like morning has arrived, however late. The same clawed huge fingers changed the world's gear ratio back to where it was. We're spinning...I see a flash of memory instead of what my eyes report. My autistic daughter spinning herself dizzy holding a ribbon, a glittery one, inches thick, sparkles fluttering. Quickly I pretend to cough and turn away, holding my closed fist in front of my face. There is no need to spoil whatever semblance of humanity is left in us by sharing this thought. " I'll make breakfast! Something hot! " She knocks the umbrella over leaping up like a clumsy feline. Burying my face in the rough cushions, I bite down on the material covering the foam, thankfull to be out of view. Breakfast is handmade tortillas, generic, mechanically separated beef fromma squat can, diced tomatoes, black beans, corn. Blue rings of flames perform the chemistry on command. All the exciting little kid junk food has been torn through, leaving stacks of stolid, adult canned rations. There is plenty of wine. At first discovery I advised Laura not to quaff the ones that read " Port ". A friend's favorite author was Jack Kerouac. He mentioned more than thrice getting drunk on port wine. Turns out that's code for alcoholic cherry snow cone syrup. Which did provide me with the line " Man, I ain't s**t my pants since I was twenty-seven! " For the record, my favorite author is HP Lovecraft. My takeaway was never, ever swim or float on, in, near, or near a painting of the ocean. Better include lakes to be sure. And iffit doesn't have fins reconsider your menu choice.