A True Story

As far as I can tell, at some point I was born, though I don’t know which day of which year. When people bring up birthdays I fall reticent and my mouth flattens into a line. I say people but I mean villagers, for I live in a village. Which village? I have no idea. There is a church which the only street dead-ends into. It was ripped out of a magazine. I give rings to little children when they ask for them, I have hundreds to spare, hanging off a carabiner which I keep in my pocket and grip like a rosary. The villagers fear an invasion from the north but nobody knows which way north is. While they talk about it they look in every direction. The cloud-cover is heavy. Daytime blurs directionlessly. Well, a villager says to me, I like your outfit. I say what outfit.



One Man’s Account of Creation

Mist. A land, not a wasteland especially. Nothing is wasted. Nothing, itself, is wasted. Dear Anna, I care for one thing and it only in the incorrectly blue artery of the present moment – and that is this letter. You were kind enough to ask for it. I have known your name, and the mere utterance of it has set me to blazes since... well, can one really say ‘Since before I remember?’ By the time you read this letter I will be smirking, and burning wastebasketsful of money which were gifted to me by Prometheus, our friend. I am a vegetarian, I have gathered. I have been studying the faculty of hate, its thrilling aspect. When the horses are tired, I gallop into the hills myself, through the pink echoing corridors of evening. After that I may show signs of exhaustion such as crushing whole skeletons.



The Town

First it stopped raining. Then people stopped crying. Infertility flourished. The heat was arousing but what was there to be aroused? The public bathroom slowly became a great telephone directory. The town was seen from no one’s perspective. At this, mothers and teenagers would go to weeping, but they would just sit on their beds massaging their eyes red. An elderly quality stuck like gum along the handrails of the town. Where one would normally say, ‘I’ll rest when I’m dead,’ citizens of the town instead said, ‘I’ll cry when I’m dead,’ for that would be something to cry about, and the drought would presumably be over.
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