“The Typist” By James JAJAC 4-15-07

He wanted to try something different so he curled in a sheet of paper and wound it into the long neglected typewriter that sat just by the window. First a test: He typed the letters:

“A, t, g, h, u, c and w”.

Monitoring his progress and seeing that it was legible, he typed again:

“This type writer works, HOORAY!”

He then pulled the page from the typewriter and crumbling it into a ball shot it up into the ceiling fan from where it bounced and dropped onto the wooden floor with an audible thump.

Driving in a new page, it now sat ready to receive his every thought. The Bright white sheet was illuminated in the dim room; A beacon of light in the blue green darkness. He sat and faced the task before him, the type writer, old oily and dusty, his clawed fingers curled around the keys, he let his mind drift out of focus and waited for something to appear. His fingers waved like snakes, and framing the picture in his mind, he slowly closed his eyes to black.

There was a wind from the window, there were his feet barefoot on the cold wooden floor, there were his lips, which he felt were frowning, there were his hands gently caressing the keys. He felt the plastic, he felt his finger tips he felt his mind finally wandering…

A sky is black above an old court house. It looks like a court house, a big officious grey building. Very large and looming, a bare flag pole stands alone above three rows of long short grey-white steps. They look like piano keys and they are divided by a black railing. At the top of the stairs are three sets of double doors, framed by heavy marble. The doors are also black, they are reflective; they echo the darkness all around them. There are trees all around, but not clustered too close together, it looks like a public park; the leaves are green but deep and dark in the dead of night. The air is very still but it is not quiet; there is the sound of voices that gradually fade to life.

A group of young children between 6 and 10 walk in an unruly pack; one of them points up and shouts: “Oh shit the moon!”

It is full and heavy clouds drift right through it. The clouds are a funny color that night, a pale blue green, they look like death.

The wandering kids come upon the court house and race up the steps. They are trying to beat each other and a tall fat boy in a red shirt beats them all and calls out: “You Losers, I win!!” There is general laughter but one of them calls out, the short one: “Shut up you fat pig”.

Two of the kids disengaging from the pack began winding their way down the stairs under the railings, snaking all around the metal posts. Once they reached the bottom they turn around and race back to the top rejoining the group. They were now all centered at the double doors peering into the dark glass to see what was inside. The fat one kicked the door, and then hit it hard with his shoulder. Two of the others did the same, nothing happened, it didn’t budge.

The fat kid said:

“I wanna break in there, it’s probably easy!”

“Why?” one of them asked.

“Just for fun, I’m fucking bored”

“I don’t know” Another answered.

The youngest one called out finally:

“I want to go home”!

He opened his eyes.

Had he been typing? Or just thinking?

He looked down at that page and saw that he had. Words had been formed. He felt odd, a little out of sorts, groggy but not tired, tired but wide awake. Rather than figure it out he tried again:

A dog?

A dog.

A dog was walking through some tall grass in a dark and deserted neighborhood. Jumping over some high weeds it found itself on a sidewalk beside an over turned car. It was smoking and the glass was melted and black. A charred cracked blistered arm hung from an open door, he sniffed it and licked it and unsatisfied walked away. A street lamp flickered above, its base bent from impact. Our dog stepped oblivious over tiny fractions of glass and metal walking across a short bridge. Beneath it was a flood of rushing water, as he passed above, the roar of the water filled his ears; they jumped up attentively at the sound. He turned and stood up placing his two paws on the low wall and looked out at what was left of the world around him. The sky in the distance was a deep orange; the fires rang out across the horizon. What was left of the city hung across the sky like a skeleton and a black smoke trailed away into the fiendish night sky like a ghost sucking and spiraling into nothing. Our dog’s eyes reflected everything in microcosm, but there lay a peculiar kind of clarity, and comprehension in those eyes- and its mouth hung open as if it were going to speak:

DAAAAAMMMMMN THAT’S SOME CRAZY SHIT OUT THERE!! HOOO-DAAAMN. WHAT THE FUCK BE GOIN’ ON? I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW. SHHEEE-HOOOT! YOU HEAR ME? I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW! KEEP ME THE FUCK OUTTA THIS. SHIIT! DAMN MY BALLS BE ITCHY. I GOTTA LICK THAT SHIT.

He swung his head around and began to lick his balls furiously.

DAMN NOW THAT IS SOMETHING SPECIAL. MY BALLS BE ITCHIN!

He kept licking his balls.

MMM HMM NOW AINT THAT SOMETHIN’?! I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS POST APOCOLYPTIC ARMAGEDON BULLSHIT N’ ALL I GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT IS MY ITCHY BALLS. EAT YOUR HEART OUT ARISTOTLE.

Near by there was an explosion. A wall collapsed two blocks away, and a car alarm screamed ‘warning’ to no one at all.

He opened his eyes. The room was still quiet but it felt rounder, like typing had brought him back into something, it turned the edges into pears. It was practically night now and there was very little light in the room. He glanced at the lamp at his side but found him self comfortable in the darkness. He could make out that he had turned the paper around but had no memory of it. His hands still hung above the keys as if in mid sentence. He could make out a post card taped to his wall. It was from his ex girlfriend it was a cat in a sombrero, it was from Mexico. The memory made him smile and then frown. He then looked at his fingers for ten full minutes until he typed these words:

EVERYTHING IS ALIVE.

He slammed his fist down hard on the table suddenly enraged. He threw the chair back and went to the kitchen. The refrigerator cast a bright light making his clothes look cheap and old; he rubbed his hands against his eyes feeling old and worn out himself. He made himself a sandwich and sat down at his little white table. Fumbling for the remote, he switched on the television. On channel 8 there was a movie about a werewolf, on channel 9 there was a movie about a black boxer, on channel 10 there was an infomercial for ‘fat burning shorts’, on channel eleven a movie about a nuclear waste land. He lingered on it and focused on eating his sand which.

Light flickered across the walls, he was watching so intently now that he felt like he was in school. Fragments of thought entered his mind: His feet, His torn shirt, refrigerator magnets, Ice cubes, Steak knives, Elevator music, ducks, cabbage, opera, jet packs, fish, monkeys, and Walnuts. He ran his bare feet across the floor clutching at mysterious objects with his toes.

There was a little girl sitting on the side of the road in the movie. She was all alone and a car pulled up beside her, there was something terrible inside the car and just before something happened he quickly changed the channel. Passing through a few news stations he laughed at an anchor mans hair, and a weird old lady who screamed when she appeared: NO BUTTER FOR ME THANKS! He switched it off when he got to the Spanish channels and leaving the bread crusts on the table went back to his desk.

He began running through his mind the beginnings of sentences.

“The pale eerie night sky…”

“Some where down beneath the water…”

“No one ever knew what happened that night…”

“It was most certainly peaceful back then…”

“Calamity is most definitely a suspicious word!”

But he couldn’t quite finish the thoughts. They were just fragments that he could pick up and run with but to where he didn’t know.

Maybe the boys trying to break into the court house and the dog with the itchy balls got eaten by an octopus? Maybe the stories combine ten chapters later. Each one could be a chapter in the same book of short stories or they are individual novels that are connected by a series of events sharing the same time line.

The boys weren’t breaking into a court house after all that day it was actually a scientific bio chemical ware house where a covert group of judges/scientists were experimenting with atomic warfare as well as genetic breeding. There only successful experiment was a single dog that had been given the power to speak but unfortunately not the power to learn. The kids did break in, setting off a chain of events that resulted in the almost total destruction of that local town- SNOWFLAKE TX; the only link to their experiments are this dog and the scientists/government have to get it back before any one can connect the two. Mean while the dog wants to direct movies and hopes to go to holly wood to follow his dreams! UH OH!

None of that made any sense.

He sat in the darkness and though he couldn’t see the keys, he impatiently typed the words (so fast it sounded like a machine gun):

THE END

There really wasn’t one, but it’ll have to do all the same. He was satisfied. It’s an ending if you say it is.

THE END

I see a landscape:

I see grass before me; a long stretch of grass, it’s yellow kindy grass; dry or something. It sticks up out of the ground like a billion zillion pencils made out of paper, strips of paper. To make it easier I will herein describe the grass as “Kenny”.

The sun shines down from the sky. The sky is gray with darker gray clouds. The sun is bright white- looking like a snow ball that is dropping out of...a snowball dropper thing.

The trees (at the end of that long stretch of Kenny) poke out of the ground like popsicle sticks, but round ones, kind of like pencils, but rounder and longer and lumpier, like carrots but browner and “branchy”. Little branches jut out that look like bendy wire hangers at the ends but at the base from where they grow out of the trees- like carrots that taper into bendy wire hangers, but the bendy wire hangers split out or “branch out” and make smaller bendies like bendy tooth picks that want to shake your hand.

If the trees were people they would be a family of tall skinny people wearing lumpy brown leather coats with green leafy fur collars-except the fur collar is kind of a green leafy ocean, or clouds that hover completely intertwined by their leafy tooth picky wire hangers (bendy) growing out of their lumpy leather coats. The leafy ocean is not actually hovering because it is growing out of their heads like a brain and the branches that hold it are like lumpy wirey brain stems that reach out like thoughts that would seem to hover above them all like one giant green and leafy wirey lumpy thought bubble.

A family of tall lumpy brown leather wearing skinny people with no faces all thinking the exact same thing- a giant ocean of green leafy wind shakey thoughts. (If they wrote poetry: “Hark: Greeny leafies, shakey. THE END”)

Standing huddled in a mass as if in an elevator or at a funeral looking out at the long base of dry pencil paper yellowy grass- “Kenny” who lays before them.

There is also a stone, no a rock, a stoney rock. It’s gray and jagged lumpy. It looked like a crushed donut with a helmet with a jagged stomach like a window screen taped in the middle. It looks like some one shot the donut and it fell down and its helmet sticks out and its stomach is choppy, liney, jagged because it was shot and then it turned to stone on top of Kenny.

The trees all walking in a line stopped before it, this stone, and thought of how sad it is and they all thought of the good times; running through fields in lumpy leather with their helmeted funny donut friend! Oh the splendor of those days as they frolicked in fields of “Kenny”, whose pencil yellowy papery laughter would soothe them all like the balm of the snow ball sun above them! Giggles and gusto but...

Now there is sadness. Donut helmet is dead and turned to stone. They stand above, all in rows consumed by sadness for their fallen friend with a singular mourning. Even Kenny is consumed by melancholy “oh why has our donut brother passed?” he asks incredulously through soil strewn lips.

“Oh whoa, whoa, why must it end this way?”

Their grieving is interrupted as they becomes distracted, looking outward past Kenny, seated upon a stretch of concrete (like long gray book marks) beside one of their darker lumpy tall leafless brothers is a pinky lumpy hairless monkey writing something down upon a V shaped slab of white lined leaf skin sheets bound together.

He is looking out at them and his hand (like pink french fries) is scratching down, scribbling rolling lines.

“Who is this idiot?” they all ask in one complete greeny leafy wirey bendy wind strewn thought.

He is looking out at the scene before him and thinks, while a snowball sun is slowly dropping:

“Taking a photo would be much easier”.

THE END