Turtles all the way down!
I will one day stop writing obnoxious, self-indulgent fiction that I try to force bandom characters into, I swear. I will at least stop posting it.
Audrey, Gabe gen / G / 1545 words.
What happens when I'm depressed and a prompt gives me the image of Gabe finding Audrey doing snow angels on the ground of a parking lot. Not beta'd so feel free to point out any mistakes. Slaughter me if you must.
References this, this and this. Oh, and this postsecret postcard. But you don't have to know all of this to understand this. Actually, if you understand it, let me know, because I don't think it makes any sense at all.
Turtles all the way down!
Gabe finds Audrey lying down in an empty space in the parking lot. Her hair is spread on the pavement like a Chinese fan, carving patterns in the insides of his eyelids with the furious glimmer of ignited wire. He knows it's gonna sting later, when it's been over thirty-seven hours since the last time he slept and a bass line pulses unsteadily inside his spine. His insides will curl unto themselves and he will still be coming down from that high, the one that started all that time ago, when he dropped acid in college for the first time.
She stretches her legs, tights with runs that get caught in the rough pebbles and stretch wider and wider. Audrey licks her lips and makes kissy faces at the sky and Gabe hates her instantly.
She is fluorescent. And he is almost ten years older than her, currently holding on to a light tube of contempt, so he sits down next to her and watches her elbows redden until pinpricks of blood seep out of her skin from scratching against the pavement. She's making a snow angel. Her limbs spreading! It is such a beautiful image, this veteran urban angel, radiating heartburn through her kneecaps and fighting for a fair pension with the government that will send her to all these wars. She is negotiating for a casket beforehand. Making plans for when she’s dead, like writing the suicide note and then remembering you have no pills, no gun, no rope, no gas, no blade.
"I am Lawrence of Arabia!"
In Gabe’s mind, an audience cheers. She is Lawrence of Arabia! She is a plot unfolding, crossed allegiances, a romance, a bank assault, an illegitimate child. She is whatever you think her up to be. Gabe calls out to her, grabbing her ankle and dipping his finger inside one of the holes in her tights.
Audrey talks to him, her words slipping through smeared lip gloss. Her lips rub together and pop, like a bubble, like a lady emerging somewhere from the depths of the earth just to say, “That’s kind of inappropriate, Gabe.”
He is the Cheshire Cat! “Like you care.” His hand jumps from one crater in the fabric to another. Left, right, up, down, her knee is a planet and he explores it with his fingers and the dirt caked underneath his chewed up nails.
Gabe remembers stories from some kid in some place, about a father who cut his son’s nails so short they bled, “It’s a lesson, son.” And then the kid couldn’t write or type or button his shirt for days, finding new nervous habits in everything. Gabe believes this is what serial killers are made of, that one tick that got out of control. Loose threads, squeaky shoes, rolled up papers, used-up lighters, new scar tissue, pencils that have been sharpened until nothing is left but the metal ring where an eraser once was. Moments like seeds, taking root and spurting out of your body like phantoms, taking the shape of the hand that holds the weapon. This is the truth of it all: this is the reason your son holds a gun to a man’s head and pulls the trigger.
In a nutshell, Gabe says this out loud, just putting it out there, “Grow your own garden of criminals. Just make their cuticles bleed for days and start a fire that will not give in!”
Audrey makes a non-committal hum of agreement, pitch high, and even though it’s just an unconnected noise, she still manages to sound off-key. A lamppost shines on them, like a photograph taken in the night with a flash bulb. Identify the subject, click, shutter goes off, and swoosh, you’re blind because the light was too much of a shock. But it’s on film now so who cares if you can’t see, this moment will last forever.
“You’re crazy, Gabe. Hey, remember that song?” She lifts her head and rests on her elbows. “You know, that school bus song about getting on someone’s nerves!”
Gabe is suddenly seventeen again and learning about intertextuality. And he would say something, he would, something about singing folks songs while swinging his feet as his mother cooks something Latin and familiar, but he only manages a “Fucking A” that rolls of his tongue before he knows it. Anyway, it’s not like Audrey is really asking him. Her legs are up in the air and the fact that she’s alive lets him know that help isn’t what she’s after.
She starts at once, long nails beating a screeching rhythm as she sings as loud as she can. Her back is to the ground and her throat is tipped back, so it comes out breathy and forced. “I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, and this is how it goes.”
He waits for it, counting nail beats. One, two, three, four, “Gaaaaaaaabe. Sing along!” and she moves on to another stanza, which is actually the same stanza, and since when does a neverending children’s song get to be divided in stanzas? Audrey’s whole body is verses and stanzas and haikus. Silence bleeds out of/her angrily and roots her/to the nightbound floor. Passive aggressive poetry; Gabe thinks about Sylvia Plath sticking her head inside an oven.
“You’re so cheap,” he says. She raises her voice and flashes a smile. “You’re so cheap but I’m not buying.”
Pause. Audrey’s hair stitches her brain to the parking lot ground.
“We are not drunk and it’s August. I think.”
“I agree! But I also know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves and…”
Her voice is scratchy and thick with whatever the obscured moonlight means, as Gabe gets up and walks a few parking spaces to the right, extending his steps so as not to step on any lines. He takes a piss, hearing her chant and strides back, jeans zipped but unbuttoned.
He lies down next to her, his head to her feet. Her sandals are possibly somewhere in a highway or a ditch or in a party she was supposed to be at. Shoes are the things that get lost the most from Gabe’s perspective. They’re sitting in a parking lot somewhere, but they are found. He says it out loud, “We are found,” carefully sounding every word so as to make sure that it does not hold a doer. An action without a source, just an open idea that means that they are citizens of the world and wherever they go is home and wherever they stay is not.
Audrey has bought many pairs of shoes over the years, flip-flops stilettos boots sandals mary janes sneakers, and the sole of her feet are a permanent dirty shade of black. She might not have walked much but the places she’s been, well, they sure were shitholes.
Lying like that they are Adam and Eve reincarnated, she is an emerged rib and they’re both driven by lust. Deadly sins extend around them like roads, seven possible outcomes to the night.
Everything is backwards inside Audrey Kitching. A whole planet lives in her and the chore is liquid lava that slips through the cracks. She exudes something that smells like burnt flowers and forgotten adolescence, and Gabe goes to her like a bee buzzes towards pollen. He’s so independent and he doesn’t need shit, or that’s what you’ll think, but the truth is, the truth is, he’s a fire-eater and a fire-starter. Okay, so maybe he’s a bit of a pyromaniac. No one has to know. He’ll just burn hearts, burn out, burn this planet extended in front of him. Her chore is lava and he doesn’t touch it, but her universe is nonexistent and Physics-defying. She is the planet that stands on top of the tiger that stands on top of the elephant that stands on top of a tortoise and then it’s turtle-turtle-turtle all the way down!
“Hey, Gabe.”
“What’s up.”
“You’re a pervert, you know that?”
He lifts his head, chin pressed to his chest as he smiles at her, all teeth and no lips.
“I like you, Audrey Kitching. You are pretty disgusting and could possibly give me the cooties, but I like you.”
Now is the moment for faux megalomania and carelessness. So she clicks her tongue and feigns boredom. “Sure, whatever.”
And now is her queue to leave. Shoes need to be broken into and then discarded. She needs to go be a dead weight on the time-space continuum and have other people gravitate towards her, so she gets up in one swift motion and walks back to the building, crushing tortoise shells with every step and walking into circles of light under lamp posts, like stones skipping over water. Funny how she always carries that it’s-always-dark-before-dawn, the-party-last-night-was-great, my-planet-is-better-than-yours look wherever she goes. The eternal prom queen, the prodigal son returns to the dysfunctional family, and her wits make her more fucked up than the rest.
Gabe watches her leave and looks down, unsurprised to find the silhouette of a murder scene drawn with chalk on the ground.
Another night, another casualty.
Audrey, Gabe gen / G / 1545 words.
What happens when I'm depressed and a prompt gives me the image of Gabe finding Audrey doing snow angels on the ground of a parking lot. Not beta'd so feel free to point out any mistakes. Slaughter me if you must.
References this, this and this. Oh, and this postsecret postcard. But you don't have to know all of this to understand this. Actually, if you understand it, let me know, because I don't think it makes any sense at all.
Turtles all the way down!
Gabe finds Audrey lying down in an empty space in the parking lot. Her hair is spread on the pavement like a Chinese fan, carving patterns in the insides of his eyelids with the furious glimmer of ignited wire. He knows it's gonna sting later, when it's been over thirty-seven hours since the last time he slept and a bass line pulses unsteadily inside his spine. His insides will curl unto themselves and he will still be coming down from that high, the one that started all that time ago, when he dropped acid in college for the first time.
She stretches her legs, tights with runs that get caught in the rough pebbles and stretch wider and wider. Audrey licks her lips and makes kissy faces at the sky and Gabe hates her instantly.
She is fluorescent. And he is almost ten years older than her, currently holding on to a light tube of contempt, so he sits down next to her and watches her elbows redden until pinpricks of blood seep out of her skin from scratching against the pavement. She's making a snow angel. Her limbs spreading! It is such a beautiful image, this veteran urban angel, radiating heartburn through her kneecaps and fighting for a fair pension with the government that will send her to all these wars. She is negotiating for a casket beforehand. Making plans for when she’s dead, like writing the suicide note and then remembering you have no pills, no gun, no rope, no gas, no blade.
"I am Lawrence of Arabia!"
In Gabe’s mind, an audience cheers. She is Lawrence of Arabia! She is a plot unfolding, crossed allegiances, a romance, a bank assault, an illegitimate child. She is whatever you think her up to be. Gabe calls out to her, grabbing her ankle and dipping his finger inside one of the holes in her tights.
Audrey talks to him, her words slipping through smeared lip gloss. Her lips rub together and pop, like a bubble, like a lady emerging somewhere from the depths of the earth just to say, “That’s kind of inappropriate, Gabe.”
He is the Cheshire Cat! “Like you care.” His hand jumps from one crater in the fabric to another. Left, right, up, down, her knee is a planet and he explores it with his fingers and the dirt caked underneath his chewed up nails.
Gabe remembers stories from some kid in some place, about a father who cut his son’s nails so short they bled, “It’s a lesson, son.” And then the kid couldn’t write or type or button his shirt for days, finding new nervous habits in everything. Gabe believes this is what serial killers are made of, that one tick that got out of control. Loose threads, squeaky shoes, rolled up papers, used-up lighters, new scar tissue, pencils that have been sharpened until nothing is left but the metal ring where an eraser once was. Moments like seeds, taking root and spurting out of your body like phantoms, taking the shape of the hand that holds the weapon. This is the truth of it all: this is the reason your son holds a gun to a man’s head and pulls the trigger.
In a nutshell, Gabe says this out loud, just putting it out there, “Grow your own garden of criminals. Just make their cuticles bleed for days and start a fire that will not give in!”
Audrey makes a non-committal hum of agreement, pitch high, and even though it’s just an unconnected noise, she still manages to sound off-key. A lamppost shines on them, like a photograph taken in the night with a flash bulb. Identify the subject, click, shutter goes off, and swoosh, you’re blind because the light was too much of a shock. But it’s on film now so who cares if you can’t see, this moment will last forever.
“You’re crazy, Gabe. Hey, remember that song?” She lifts her head and rests on her elbows. “You know, that school bus song about getting on someone’s nerves!”
Gabe is suddenly seventeen again and learning about intertextuality. And he would say something, he would, something about singing folks songs while swinging his feet as his mother cooks something Latin and familiar, but he only manages a “Fucking A” that rolls of his tongue before he knows it. Anyway, it’s not like Audrey is really asking him. Her legs are up in the air and the fact that she’s alive lets him know that help isn’t what she’s after.
She starts at once, long nails beating a screeching rhythm as she sings as loud as she can. Her back is to the ground and her throat is tipped back, so it comes out breathy and forced. “I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, and this is how it goes.”
He waits for it, counting nail beats. One, two, three, four, “Gaaaaaaaabe. Sing along!” and she moves on to another stanza, which is actually the same stanza, and since when does a neverending children’s song get to be divided in stanzas? Audrey’s whole body is verses and stanzas and haikus. Silence bleeds out of/her angrily and roots her/to the nightbound floor. Passive aggressive poetry; Gabe thinks about Sylvia Plath sticking her head inside an oven.
“You’re so cheap,” he says. She raises her voice and flashes a smile. “You’re so cheap but I’m not buying.”
Pause. Audrey’s hair stitches her brain to the parking lot ground.
“We are not drunk and it’s August. I think.”
“I agree! But I also know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves and…”
Her voice is scratchy and thick with whatever the obscured moonlight means, as Gabe gets up and walks a few parking spaces to the right, extending his steps so as not to step on any lines. He takes a piss, hearing her chant and strides back, jeans zipped but unbuttoned.
He lies down next to her, his head to her feet. Her sandals are possibly somewhere in a highway or a ditch or in a party she was supposed to be at. Shoes are the things that get lost the most from Gabe’s perspective. They’re sitting in a parking lot somewhere, but they are found. He says it out loud, “We are found,” carefully sounding every word so as to make sure that it does not hold a doer. An action without a source, just an open idea that means that they are citizens of the world and wherever they go is home and wherever they stay is not.
Audrey has bought many pairs of shoes over the years, flip-flops stilettos boots sandals mary janes sneakers, and the sole of her feet are a permanent dirty shade of black. She might not have walked much but the places she’s been, well, they sure were shitholes.
Lying like that they are Adam and Eve reincarnated, she is an emerged rib and they’re both driven by lust. Deadly sins extend around them like roads, seven possible outcomes to the night.
Everything is backwards inside Audrey Kitching. A whole planet lives in her and the chore is liquid lava that slips through the cracks. She exudes something that smells like burnt flowers and forgotten adolescence, and Gabe goes to her like a bee buzzes towards pollen. He’s so independent and he doesn’t need shit, or that’s what you’ll think, but the truth is, the truth is, he’s a fire-eater and a fire-starter. Okay, so maybe he’s a bit of a pyromaniac. No one has to know. He’ll just burn hearts, burn out, burn this planet extended in front of him. Her chore is lava and he doesn’t touch it, but her universe is nonexistent and Physics-defying. She is the planet that stands on top of the tiger that stands on top of the elephant that stands on top of a tortoise and then it’s turtle-turtle-turtle all the way down!
“Hey, Gabe.”
“What’s up.”
“You’re a pervert, you know that?”
He lifts his head, chin pressed to his chest as he smiles at her, all teeth and no lips.
“I like you, Audrey Kitching. You are pretty disgusting and could possibly give me the cooties, but I like you.”
Now is the moment for faux megalomania and carelessness. So she clicks her tongue and feigns boredom. “Sure, whatever.”
And now is her queue to leave. Shoes need to be broken into and then discarded. She needs to go be a dead weight on the time-space continuum and have other people gravitate towards her, so she gets up in one swift motion and walks back to the building, crushing tortoise shells with every step and walking into circles of light under lamp posts, like stones skipping over water. Funny how she always carries that it’s-always-dark-before-dawn, the-party-last-night-was-great, my-planet-is-better-than-yours look wherever she goes. The eternal prom queen, the prodigal son returns to the dysfunctional family, and her wits make her more fucked up than the rest.
Gabe watches her leave and looks down, unsurprised to find the silhouette of a murder scene drawn with chalk on the ground.
Another night, another casualty.