Day 15-- Night

And so he drove, past the fields, past the suburbs, into the vastness of open space. All open, open. Only the clothing on his back and an empty backseat of his car. He tried to genuinely void his mind of all that had happened, of all that ever was. He knew that the purity of this place, this razing of all past ties was all that remained that was authentic.

The only images now were in his mind. He slowly pulled up to the wheatfield of his childhood. Stars around for miles. Hot August nights. He was glad that there was almost nothing in the cab of his car or his trunk.

He pulled up closer to the field, and methodically went to get the pistol out of his trunk. He made sure that every chamber was loaded. Time to aim, pointing up into the brain. He figured he’d walk a good mile or so into the field so that his heart would get working and all.

He arrived at the spot.

“Maybe I’ll do better the next time around.” He prepped, aimed and cocked.

Just then, a column of light descended. It began to speak. “Your engineers do not approve,” said a robo-voice. “Put the gun down. Put the gun down.” His mouth was still full of metal. He had only hesitated for a second, not changing his positioning.

--

He awoke on a table, with what looked like a human heart suspended in the air. “You have failed at love. You have failed at love. Would you like to insert a coin and play again? Would you like to try again?”

“No. I am too afraid. Never send me back.” Almost immediately, a noise like a buzzsaw approached him swiftly. Pain seared through his corpse as he watched himself being bolted to a table.

“Welcome to the display. We are the god that shames you.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

David Lynch Moments

Here's one of those weird peripherally personal stories about Lynch. When I was between 8-10 in the early 90s, my mother used to visit this elderly Romanian professor in Garden Grove. He was fluent in at least 4 or 5 languages but not too strong in English. Occasionally he and I were able to communicate in French. I was often bored in his house and I don't even think he had a working TV, or if there was my mom wouldn't let me watch it. He did however, seem to, like many immigrants I knew at the time, collect stacks of TV Guides--both for the English practice and the pop culture understanding. And that was the first place I learned about Twin Peaks. It seemed so sophisticated and grown-up, and I often got it mixed up with Knots Landing (also quite frequently on the cover of TV Guide at the time). I remember once reading an article about the show but I don't remember what it said. The visits to the Professor eventually ended. He had a home caregiver, and eventually he was...
Read more

Pop Culture Nation-A Recovered Memory of Cherished Treasures

Sometime between 2004 and Spring of 2006, I forcefully slammed a very large shoebox full of cassette tapes into the garbage can at my mother's house. You don't understand. Not just original cassette tapes. Mix tapes. During the peak hipster era of High Fidelity and Say Anything (much older, because yes we were already rehashing nostalgia), I committed a high crime against art and Xennial self-determination. I remember neither the context of the conflict, nor why I desired so strongly to sabotage myself. Was it later than then? Had I moved out again? Was it closer to 2008? I couldn't tell you. But I knew I was on one of my decluttering kicks. Inasmuch as I am messy and allow things to pile up (hopefully not to a hoarderly level) I have also gotten on occasionally forceful kicks of throwing my possessions away. Mostly because they reminded me of a part of myself that was over. Around this same time I think I dumped all the handwritten letters between me and beloved friends be...
Read more

I Have Buying Power, and you are my Service Provider, Dammit

Recently on Bluesky I wrote a thread about the first major experiences 10 years ago that caused me to get un-addicted to social media and revamped my PoV about it to instead understand social media platforms (particularly Meta and Xitter, but honestly a lot of places have their icky aspects) as places that are authentically harming a lot of people. Seeing how arbitrary the treatment I received during that encounter 10 years ago was, plus post- 10/7/23 when I saw a space that was previously supposed to be fun not only become a propaganda machine (for no singular viewpoint) and a viewfinder for the endless slaughter and torture of people, I grew heavily disillusioned with how socials were functioning. Those were the big moments during which I started to notice the diminishing returns. It then became slightly easier to leave spaces that were suffocating me with their lack of reach. What, so I pay in personal data but you don’t show my stuff to anyone? Not reciprocal. In a lot of ways,...
Read more