stream of consciousness

by sw
© 2005

The machine surrounded her, beeping and clunking within six inches of her face. One of her half-assed ear plugs popped out when there were still three more to go. You're doing great. Just three more to go, the voice from the intercom in front of her face said – which she could only half hear because one plug remained firmly positioned. A jackhammer. Close encounters of the third kind with her jeans down around her knees so as not to mess with the magnets. She waited until the last second to take out her belly ring for fear that the ten year old hole would close up instantly, as punishment for betraying her beliefs and conforming to anti-piercing society. She would have gotten one or possibly both nipples done had it not involved a complete stranger cupping her breasts in a public shop. No fucking way. What if she passed out, both breasts exposed? Unconscious she would never remember to suck in her gut. More than one of her ugly secrets exposed. This must be what it's like to listen to aliens. Just shut up and listen for once. Right now no one cares what you're thinking. It's all about the magnetic imaging. Have these nurses ever been in one of these? She tries to picture her spine as still as possible. Do they allow for breath? Her leg twitched from being still for so long. My spine aches. How do you tell the aliens to get you out of here?

by mk
© 2005

Cold blue azalea locked into the fire of dawn over mountains cast in ice. When the rocking horse rode down the rivers and cowboys step long legged over this way and pistols drop in purple sand, don't forget the way it was. Cuz that's the way it will be forever and ever. Lust don't come in packages he said and leaned over to spit on the brown dog's head whatever we lost it won't come back this way sometime soon but that's another thing warts and all she said warts and all I was wishing it were summer again in the hills and we were slipping down wet and gleaming in pools of blue rain from the wasted dialogues of clouds and cactus flowers I thought to be somewhere else by now.

shaggy, succulent, glissando, mortified, repetitious, cats

Untitled
© 2005
by mk

The cats were shredding the furniture to shaggy threads.

Calvin was mortified. He hadn't anticipated that housesitting was going to be this difficult.

It wasn't only the cats. He had apparently overwatered the succulents and they were rotting and growing a white fungus.

Besides that there were the sounds from the neighbors which were driving him crazy. The walls must have been made of papier mache. He was awakened regularly every day to a combination of the glissandos of the piano teacher practicing upstairs and the repetitious bangs of the bedframe of the newlyweds next door.

Untitled
© 2005
by sw

She awoke before dawn to the sound of cats ... cats fighting, cats meowing, cats scattering with excitement over the smallest movement from the bed. She was mortified when she peered stealthily from beneath the pillow at the alarm clock that read four thirteen a.m. Maybe if she lay still and ignored them, they would give up for another couple of hours. Then the shaggy twenty-two pounder launched himself off her head and slid across the slippery headboard like a seasoned piano player's fingers interpreting the glissando effect.

She sat up suddenly, pissed off. Cats scrambled off in any direction that led to an exit. She stretched across the floor, half her body still in bed, one hand supporting herself above the cold wood floor, and flipped the door closed. Exhausted and desperate for sleep, she lay back down. That's when she realized the repetitious one had managed to stay behind. She shoved her off the bed at the first light squawk, only to have her immediately leap back up to do it again. And again. And again. It's amazing what a feline will do for the succulent taste of canned cat food.


© 2005
by kk


Shaggy hated it when Luis did the glissando at the end. It was so cheesy. And, when Sussie Hellinger slithered up to him after the recital, Shaggy knew it was only a matter of time before she mortified him by proving herself to be nothing more than a wretched social climber with bad breath. He had it on good authority that Sussie kept two dozen cats in that monolith on Fifth Avenue and that every inch of the place was permeated with the smell of urine.

Look how Luis grasps Marc Sylvester’s succulent hand. Could he be any more obvious? Luis and his repetitious affairs with unsuitable hangers on. Why did he have to humiliate him at every turn? Shaggy sometimes wondered if enough was enough. But when it came down to it, could he even imagine a life without that officious tiny pianist looking at him across the breakfast table every morning?

Shaggy turned away from the foul vapor issuing from Sussie’s mouth and refusing to give Luis the satisfaction of even the simplest of goodbyes, left the room and walked out of the house. He hailed a cab and gave the driver his mother’s address in Queens. Shaggy was going home.