Heya boys! I was writing for Important School Things but got distracted because nothing makes me wanna headbang very close to sharp objects like "official numbering documentation professionalism thingies". I wanna practice writing more because mmm, yes, that's the good shit, pass pass puff. Character voice stuff yeehaw my kiddos
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My dad said I was born all weird.
He said that the plates of my head wouldn’t stick together right, like the sticky stuff supposed to be doing all the sticking stuck wrong. Like jigsaw pieces cut badly. On top of that, my jigsaw pieces were especially soft, so everyone had to be extra careful to not-- Well, drop me, or I might’ve ended up with a pancake brain. So I think that’s why I'm kind of weird.
I really, really couldn’t sleep this one night, because of all the thunder in my pancake brain.
It starts off like a little cloud.
I drop my spoon at lunch, there goes the sprinkling.
Accidentally called my teacher mom. In comes the rain.
I cross the street and there’s this blaring noise and get hit with mad lighting and I realize that there’s actually a red light, I just didn’t see it, I trip—hop--sprint out of the way of traffic, I yell “UH SORRY” but oh, his window is rolled up so he probably can’t hear me--
When I get home, I can feel it.
I’ve got a premonition.
The great thing about premonitions is that you don’t gotta explain a thing. They just happen. And that’s perfect for me because I can’t explain shit. Everything just gets so damn noisy even if it’s actually really silent, it makes me wanna shaddup. I’d rather just feel the thing.
Just get to the door, champ. You can do it.
13 steps up and turn the handle, walk in and pass out if you have to, no questions asked.
13 steps…
Just take the step…
Thought about my bed and how I should’ve washed the sheets already. And probably the pillow cases too. Wait, I don’t got any pillow cases… What am I thinking…
I was suddenly hit with this gross feeling that I ought to wash up. Like, just wash my whole body. I was hit with this urge to scrub until it hurts. I looked down and zoomed in on all the lines in all the fingers in all my hands. I dunno why, but I think I suddenly really hated my hands…
My pancake brain caught fire.
A thunder clap so loud, it slapped me out of space time.
The pieces of the puzzle flew apart.
I just started walking, very very fast in the leftest direction I could manage away from the steps to the door to the place I should’ve been but wasn’t been.
See? This is how it always is. I just couldn’t handle it somehow.
Beyond our town is a whole lot of nothing. Well, rightmost is the road to the city, but leftmost is all just browns and greys and stickler things that get in your socks real bad. Dust that just settles into your insides and covers it all up. Used to play out here on the forever empty road with Dally, or at least until his lungs gave him trouble. There’s this pretty as hell line where the sun hits the wheat just right and turns that broken old train trac some kind of fiery gold, but by the time I had made it was already dark. So I just… kept going.
Wheat and dust and little specks where supposed to be houses.
When I was little, I used to think that road went on forever. Like, if you walked it, you would just keep going and going until you walked straight off the Earth itself and into the emptiest void of the cosmos, all swirly and cold and alone. I really hated that. But I liked it, too, because I didn’t know for sure if it was true or not. The thought that there was a road that could take me anywhere elsewhere made me feel better.
I only stopped walking when the road ended.
There’s this sudden, ragged cut of concrete that rips into the dust and dives into a muddied little stream between these two pipe-barrel thingies. Just a little ditch with water and a coke can in it. Kinda looks like a grave. I don’t know what I was expecting.
I’m in the middle of nowhere. God, I’m the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in the middle of this shitty thunderstorm. There’s no thunder, there’s no lightning, but I can hear everything. I can remember how it felt.
I see the moonlight spark off the water, and I remember how it felt.
I can swim forever. Look at how far I can go!
We never went on trips. Never. But we did for that summer, and spent the whole time in one of those fancy lake houses with the mothy porch lights. I remember sleeping in our swimsuits, even with all the sand. I remember burnt hotdogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And there was a lake as big as the sky.
That shitty little stream makes me miserable.
My brother was terrified of the lake because he thought the algae would eat him to death, but I felt electric. I would wake up, shoot like a pinball off a spring straight into the stratosphere and land somewheres in the middle of that overgrown lake. And I loved it. I loved how it was as deep a hole in space.
“Watch how you go, cotton-top. You could get caught on something there.”
I could see the stars off the water. I could feel my skull softly melting.
I wanted to see how deep I could go. It was probably endless, but I wanted to see the end of endless. Everything around me turning black until I’ve swum off the edge of nowhere. I hear all the things at once. The lines between the jigsaw pieces start to fall apart.
Damn, it’s completely the same. That’s it. I’ve got the whole damn lake in my head, that’s it.
I said it had started with that spoon at lunch, but it really started in that lake.
Or before that.
Maybe when I was born weird. That’s my premonition. All because those jigsaw pieces, you know, they’re making me itch all the time--
POP.
I’ve always been sensitive at the ears. Can’t really even stand cotton swabs, to be honest, and when people do that blow-tease thing I just get so irked I lose myself. So when I felt the weight of the world come crashing into my soft, broken little skull, I fizzled out. My limbs went limp. A flush of bubbles escaped me and then nothing. I couldn’t even tell where up was. The sun was just a nasty little smudge in the dark, as if somebody had tried to thumb a stain off their counter top.
I didn’t really want to swim anymore, up or down or anywheres. I was tired. God, let me rest.
I had really reached the end of endless. Or some shit.
I wasn’t sad.
I was pretty sad remembering it, but not sad living it.
Dad got me. I was fine.
It was fine.
It’s cool.
I’m fine now.
I realized that I had put my hands real tight over my ears just thinking about it all, like I didn’t want my brains leaking out or something. And I was crouching, too. I take everything so seriously sometimes. I hadn’t really reached my shitty end after all. I’d braved the storm. Shit.
I suddenly became aware of my hands again. I still really wanted to wash them, but I wasn’t exactly having the means to do so. I thought about doing that business in the stream but I realized it was actually pretty dirty, with all those old bottles and dirt clods in there and what-have-you. Very irresponsible of people. I decided I would just wash them at home, so I turned around and began walking all the way through the middle of nowheres back to the middle of somewheres. I stuck my hand deep in my pockets so I wouldn’t have to think about them. They really bothered me for some reason.
Yeah, and I guess that’s all that happened that night.
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I'm a tired country bumpkin and I need to take a nappy. I like to write the words "somewheres", "something" and "shit". Goodnight.
