Space reserved for Larry Fiskovitz story
2033 to 2035
Think, like Hap and Leonard
Bobby Western...anywhere
....tangential to Randall Fincher and
Sisyphus in recovery center
Samantha Grows Younger
Charles Anthony Jung is looking for Samantha, indirectly
Milo Gollander is looking for self-emancipated name-changing son
As THOUGH in general 4 corporations were trying to merge into one and the last one wasn't having it....
Then, suddenly: plagues.
The History of Writing (etc etc)~
ReplyDeleteThere was something mondogrenous to the cashiers of the afterrealm in Sisyphus's mind about Margarett Stapleton's office. The incandescent pale blue walls paradoxically made the 8 ft. by 8 ft. room claustrophobically denser than it was while proffering an opposing sense of infinite vacancy. It was like climbing into some sort of capsule or locker, whereupon an hallucinatory other world became available.
Margarett received Samantha with ordinary hospitality. She was sitting at her desk, sorting through the morning's bookkeeping when Samantha gently let herself in the room, lightly taping the door with a knuckle as she did, Sisyphus keeping pace, becoming something apparently sober.
"Good morning--afternoon, Mrs. Stapleton," she said, as though she were there to meet some instructor, or tax attorney.
"Good morning, Samantha. I'll be with you in a moment." She finished writing something and put down her pen and placed her hands on the desk and looked up with kind, beleaguered eyes. "What can I do for you?"
Sisyphus heard her voice and looked around the room in search of some mild feature of the afterrealm, then swiftly remembering he was on the living earth, in a room in a care facility of some fashion.
"I wanted to introduce you to someone very dear to me," Samantha said. "An old friend," some modicum of hope in her tone of pity.
Margarett's eyes had gone to the deranged form of Sisyphus without alarm. He inspired neither fear nor annoyance. "Okay," she said.
"Well," said Samantha, with an elephant on a leash and excitement flooding her miniature heart, " you see I happened to wake up especially early this morning and I didn't think I had a chance of falling back asleep, so I started my routine and went out to take a little walk after." So far, so good. "I thought to buy myself a package of cigaretts to amuse myself, when--out of nowhere--I ran into my friend here"--Sisyphus noting Margarett at her desk, the mosaic of papers before her, Samantha seemingly the only one in the room with concern whatsoever -- "and after making sure he was who I thought he was -- and he's got nowhere else to stay right now -- well, I just hoped the poor fellow could stay in my room until something more suitable was available."
The atmosphere was intimidating, like a beast that required serious focus, the framed documents on the wall reading themselves to the room, Margarett's untrammelled propriety, the silence like a fly cleaning its paws.
Margarett blinked.
"Is that okay?"
Margarett said, "Can I ask what his name is?"
The momentum of everything paused as she thought, said, "Troy."
Sisyphus looked at Margarett. "Hello."
"Hello, Troy," she said. "Nice to meet you."
Samantha felt the sobriety of relief extending liberty, then balance, then agency.
"He looks very tired, Samantha," said Margarett. "Why don't you take him to your room to lie down and you and I can sort through the details later? In a few hours maybe. I have some work to do at the moment."
"Of course. Absolutely. Just let me know when you're ready."
Sisyphus felt himself being pulled by Samantha's hand back in the direction they'd come from, through the lobby, towards the elevator, the sedentary people in comfortable chairs or walking statically towards the dining area or the restroom or nowhere in particular. He enjoyed a deep sense of resuscitation as the elevator descended with a respectul 'ping' and the steel doors parted and she tenderly drew him inside to go upstairs to her room.
****
The elevator rose, the steel doors parted, and Samantha briskly swung Sisyphus by his wrist into the hallway, empty save for the light and the lingering memory of people closing doors and the air-conditioner exhaling its robotic breath. She felt herself divided, almost surgically, between her desperate yearning to have the hero of heroes in her private audience, and the complimentary need to do so without injuring him. It were as though Sisyphus were an unlikely, and indisputably beloved and irreplaceable carton of eggs--and that Samantha hadn't seen such an egg in an agonizingly long time.
ReplyDeleteWith few words, and less hurry, she stepped her way towards her room -- closer, closer yet...then stopped in front of it to search her pockets for the keys.
He was becoming centered. The reincarnation, the events of the morning, rippled with familiar tones. His burden diminished to little, practically nothing as the shuffle & dangle and little abrasions of objects being moved around and sorted played like some percussion instrument being tuned. It was good to be here, he decided. The memory of the bullet made him flinch every time he remembered it, but then some stoic mechanism would respond as fast as a press, and his agency would precede again like a conveyor-belt.
After checking the pockets on her coat and the pockets of her long skirt, twice, and digging through the miscellania of her purse with a small glint of recrimination towards the keys, she finally seized upon them in the morass of her belongings. And the door opened into her cozy, affordable apartment.
She pulled him inside with a ballerina's confidence.
It was an epitome of modesty, like a hotel room with a slightly larger living area and bedroom. At the far end of the apartment's entrance, a small circular clock hung on the wall in discreet harmony with the 6 ft. by 3' entertainment center, simple flatscreen t.v., all bereft of photos or sentimental items of any kind. The place was clean, the carpeted floors soft and undamaged by liquids or carelessness or the accumulated neglect of time. She kissed him on the mouth again, like a tiny serpent trespassing sacred territory. He felt himself stagger a little in her arms, as she had on the street, only now he had ability he could spend, afford without searching some emergency chamber. He returned her kiss and she tightened her arms about his waist like a vice. They moved, one lifting the other like some happy amusement-park spectacle, riding the cold burn of satisfaction as if redelivered from dark extinction.
In the week to come he'd become familiar with the staff of the retirement home and his newest, temporary neighbors, and quite a few other things of note, including Sisyphus's unwanted rise to ephemeral celebrity status, and the tide of Evangelical/New Life Awakening/Reincarnations. And Sisyphus would attend "rehabilitative therapy," self-care classes to aide him rejoin the living world in an "effective, substantial way."
But in that thickly gorgeous moment before its inevitable tomorrow, the uncompromising boulder of his existence began to slow, and his ancient hand took purchase, foundation in the year 2036.
****