(no subject)
Someone left the gas on. Jimmy Caster smells it from the porch. The sheet hanging over the window - the children’s sheet, pale with washing - balloons, and he imagines it is the fault of the gas, tumbling out in invisible clouds from the window. His cigarette shimmers. He pictures the gas spreading in big blankets along the floor of the trailer park, like quiet suffocation, waiting for an idle ash to tumble hellward.
The neighbor in the next trailer smells it from their living room, sitting on the stretched tweed and flipping through channels silently. Twenty turns to twenty three and nothing. Twenty three turns to twenty nine and nothing. Twenty nine turns to thirty eight turns to nine hundred and sixty three turns to black static and nothing. Alone, the neighbor chews.
Jimmy follows the smell like a winding road inside and Sharon inhales lungfuls of it, her wrinkled fingers smoothed with her grip on the stove’s black handle. The stove does not recognize the print of her palms. When she touched it before it was with her fingertips to peek inside, or shielded by thick oven mitts, a little worn at the finger joints. It exhales gas into her mouth, rescue breathing, an effort to reinflate her lungs.
He steps inside the screen, opening straight to the kitchenette, opening straight to his mother’s body jutting out from the stove. His body reacts outside his will. His mid-section contracts, sick. The back of his eyes remembers pictures his mind forgot, scenes of twelve and thirteen and seven, walking in to the wallpapered room and expecting food, instead smelling a sourness he’d later know as the smell of sex. And his mother in an apron but only that, her ass stuck high as her head merged with the waist of a fresh stranger.
He is older now, the same size as the men that towered over his mother, towered over him. When he pulls her out her struggle is no great resistance, and she submits willingly, relieved. The stove lets out one last gasp before its slams shut, and Jimmy wrenches the knob right.
Two kids walking past hear the slam of the stove, the subsequent fight. They stop their game of four square -- modified for two -- to listen to the voices at war. The younger one hears a variation on a theme played at his house repeatedly. He grasps the ball like a teddy bear in bed. When the older one looks over, he snatches the ball from him in disgust. “What’d you stop for?” the older asks aggressively. The younger stares at him. It is the older’s serve.
You stupid fucking bitch! Jimmy’s fingers ball up despite themselves. The reply sings in minor keys, weeping. Why did you do that, why did you do that. He doesn’t know. His fist on her chest feels softer than others, like there’s no bone inside. He aims for her breasts. The bruises he leaves changed shape from infant to adult. He never hits her face.
When your child beats you, it’s called self-flagellation. A penance. Welcome to Chicagoland.
((ooc: experiment in imitating cortazar's collective stream of consciousness.))
The neighbor in the next trailer smells it from their living room, sitting on the stretched tweed and flipping through channels silently. Twenty turns to twenty three and nothing. Twenty three turns to twenty nine and nothing. Twenty nine turns to thirty eight turns to nine hundred and sixty three turns to black static and nothing. Alone, the neighbor chews.
Jimmy follows the smell like a winding road inside and Sharon inhales lungfuls of it, her wrinkled fingers smoothed with her grip on the stove’s black handle. The stove does not recognize the print of her palms. When she touched it before it was with her fingertips to peek inside, or shielded by thick oven mitts, a little worn at the finger joints. It exhales gas into her mouth, rescue breathing, an effort to reinflate her lungs.
He steps inside the screen, opening straight to the kitchenette, opening straight to his mother’s body jutting out from the stove. His body reacts outside his will. His mid-section contracts, sick. The back of his eyes remembers pictures his mind forgot, scenes of twelve and thirteen and seven, walking in to the wallpapered room and expecting food, instead smelling a sourness he’d later know as the smell of sex. And his mother in an apron but only that, her ass stuck high as her head merged with the waist of a fresh stranger.
He is older now, the same size as the men that towered over his mother, towered over him. When he pulls her out her struggle is no great resistance, and she submits willingly, relieved. The stove lets out one last gasp before its slams shut, and Jimmy wrenches the knob right.
Two kids walking past hear the slam of the stove, the subsequent fight. They stop their game of four square -- modified for two -- to listen to the voices at war. The younger one hears a variation on a theme played at his house repeatedly. He grasps the ball like a teddy bear in bed. When the older one looks over, he snatches the ball from him in disgust. “What’d you stop for?” the older asks aggressively. The younger stares at him. It is the older’s serve.
You stupid fucking bitch! Jimmy’s fingers ball up despite themselves. The reply sings in minor keys, weeping. Why did you do that, why did you do that. He doesn’t know. His fist on her chest feels softer than others, like there’s no bone inside. He aims for her breasts. The bruises he leaves changed shape from infant to adult. He never hits her face.
When your child beats you, it’s called self-flagellation. A penance. Welcome to Chicagoland.
((ooc: experiment in imitating cortazar's collective stream of consciousness.))