The end table in the small room beside the steps is green. It’s single drawer is drawn. The contents of it are strewn on the floor. There's a twisty paper clip, a dirty nickel, and a greasy pen. Amalia looks at these things. Her eyes pass over them. She reads what they are but their substance is lost to her. She tries to give them value or measure their profundity. But she fails and cries. Hitching up her lip she releases a series of wrenching spasms. Tears pour down her face. They gather on her balled up chin grower larger and larger. Dripping onto her already salty blouse.
The kitchen is coming. The kitchen is coming, Matt marched around the bed thrusting a bulbous plunger into the air as he went. The red text blinking in the lower corner insists that a SGTMKR's has been activated a lot in the last seventy two hours. Click, press Shift and Seven. Then the image rolls forward like a cart wheel. The left girl made up with a long braid tells the one on the right, So what if I’m reactionary, her shoulders shrug, It’s not like it’s dishonest.
There’s a muffled sound from behind the camera, How’s that?
Hmmm, She pauses, one of her eyes is scrunched up more tight than before. How ‘bout this, She says reaching outside of the frame. The picture jostles bleeding into fuzz then it snaps back. We’ll walk on the beaches, hold all the hands and make love until there’s nothing’s left. We won’t buy their bridges. We’ll leave those toys in the rain. We’ll blow them to hell with candy kisses because they don’t matter. We’ll be mean spirits if we need to be or even righteous drunks. We’ll stuff them with cotton and make them laugh until they drown in their own pee. We’ll debase their everythings and wallpaper all of the rest... Stop, return, blink blink. Click, press Shift and Seven again.
The one on the right has such a blue dress that her eyes almost seem bruised. She smiles, she flirts with the back of her hand. The left girl offers her a bouquet of imaginary flowers. She pulls at her ear, So what if I’m reactionary.
The pictures are projected above the mantle. It can't be, still she wishes it was about something different. If it was about something like a bent nail in a bathroom sink. Or it could be about a jar with a stuck lid. Or this one chair, in this one room, maybe the room where she thinks about mad crazy science. Maybe it would be better it was about something.
What's this all about, Matt asks. A calender of dates and times, that's not a life lived. You're in a room full of smoke and sex and booze. You could be a whole mess of gerbils, he said sparring with the lamp's shadow again. Instead it's montage, montage, montage.
It’s just a rudimentary simple root with a hitched buddy system. But then again noooo...
He had a pig's tooth when he smiled. Matt had to take the dental twine from her drawer and wrap it around his head, under his chin and behind the ears. He had to be the one with the slow leaking kettle that wheezed like her aunt.
She strikes a match on the chair's hard seat lighting her cigarette. The sudden sulfur burns her nose and her eyes melt a little from the sting. She inhales. She squares her shoulders and laughs at the thought of his pot belly, his naked knees at the edge of the bed.
I'll regret Tuesday more, she assured him. But she can't remember why. She's forgotten where her keys are. The door behind her is open. Until recently this room was moon or lunar mist, then it was periwinkle, and before that it was something called dancer rose. The room sharing it's north wall is mostly empty. There is a writing table without any drawers. He used to keep a desk in that room. He used abide his time there.
The bleached glow from Soft System’s projection, it’s an ugly suit, tailored to a nearly empty room. That red blink of text in the right corner; SGTMKR: 021742.0924.59. Again, I know that I've seen this a lot in the last seventy two hours. So Soft... So Seven... That's the projector's ad.
So the little girl goes again, I’m reactionary, shrugging, Its honest work.
Miko!? stop, click, whir...
The old dog murmurs nap nap while the crusty chair ticks. There’s a clock smart on the mantle making tock tock clucking sounds. In the cup is the coffee a prayer that’s waiting for warm. Round and round on the rug is the table short a tiny chair. Beside the wall is a lamp, and a vase, and a candle cut in 2. 2 brass hooks and a frame they hang there as empty as borrowed ribs. There is no window waiting at the door. The hall that goes to the bathroom is short. The porch that leads to the yard, it's through that door to the flowers.
So the little girl goes again, I’m reactionary, She shrugs. Its honest work.
Miko!?
Hmmm, She pauses, scrunching a wink up real tight and slow. How ‘bout this, She says, We’ll walk the beaches, hold all the hands and make love until nothing’s left. We’re not their dotage. Nope, we’ll leave their toys in the rain. Then we’ll blow to hell all that we can. They don’t matter. We’re mean spirits. The righteous drunkards at their bed side. We’ll suffocate them with funny until they drown in their own pa-pa-pee. Demeaning their modernity, I'll fashion paper airplanes for the lofty bits and have a day at the park we build.
Then with a slight she adds, Just for you. You like?
Natch...
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