(no subject)
There's a man in Shawshank Prison who doesn't belong there.
Not because he's innocent--no, not even the slickest defense attorney going could've gotten him off this time, and this time Armand St. Clair did not have the slickest defense attorney going, he had Castle Rock's answer to a question nobody asked, a wet-behind-the-ears public defender who called the prosecutor Sully. Didn't matter. Armand was dead to rights on home invasion and three counts of attempted murder, the only one of six conspirators captured--three escaped, two dead and One Was Johnny. Thirty-nine years in that Shawshank Pen, and Armand will pushing his walker down Broadway if he ever sees New York again.
He doesn't belong here because it's the wrong world.
It took him a while to get it. At first he thought that the local yokels were fucking with him, about his car and his money; the different brand names he put down to Maine, fucking Maine, fucking godforsaken Maine, where people still sip Moxie and swat at the state bird while it chows down on them. But as spring becomes summer and his appeals are rejected (police fucking brutality, he never got proper treatment from where that little cunt shot him in the leg, and oh ain't it fun being a gimp in Shawshank) and the fucking Maine State Bird, the everloving mosquito, nummies down on his ass day and night, the election takes over everybody's attention, screws and fellow prisoners alike, and the problem becomes obvious.
Armand is not a political creature by nature, but he knows that fat fuck Al Gore was not the President when he pointed his car after the taillights of Rudy's El Camino and crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge out of New York and (ultimately) into Maine. He remembers not the names but the faces of some candidates, and they aren't right. Nothing is right. That's when Armand started to feel like there was some kind of hole in his head, a hole he can see when he looks just right. A hole in the middle of things. At night he lies in bed staring up at his cellmate's bunk and presses his fists against his eyes, trying not to see that awful hole and what lies beyond it. Presses his fists to his eyes until red circles bloom and stare back at him.
It's not long after that, that he gets the idea of wishing on the moon.
He's got to get out of Shawshank, and that is the truth. He's got to get home, back to the right New York, the real New York, or he's going to go crazy, and that is the truth. And the moon knows the answer, and that, too, is the truth. You've just got to catch it in the right mood. You've got to make a wish on the dark side of the moon, the new moon, as if God rolled his eye not to see the shitheap below, and the dark rime grows until the moon is a black gleaming ball in the sky.
The moon tells him how to get home; it's simple enough. He was brought here (to the wrong world) to do a job. When he finishes the job, he can go home to the right world. End of the line.
Just finish the job.
The thing is--once the moon has told him once, it kind of gets a hard-on about the idea. It gets to where he hears it all the time, day or night, on the can or in the showers or in the yard, the urgency worse than ever, he's got to get out, got to finish the job, kill the bitch--Carthago delenda est. He doesn't know what it means, but it becomes a theme, a throb in his brain as he limps across the yard or is bent over a washing machine by bigger and stronger men, eyes squeezed shut and those hateful red blooms staring at him with mockery and contempt.
Carthago delenda est. In other words: finish the job. In other words: kill the cunt. Kill the teenybopper bitch who fucked his leg up mos' righteous. (carthago) The half-breed nigger dyke with the itchy trigger finger has to die, the moon tells him, and NOW, while she's still young and stupid and confused. The mother isn't so important, she's dried up and rotting inside beside, the little doctors will cut her thread soon enough and she'll never squeeze out another gunslinger, but the other one is a problem. The other one, dyke or not, lives in a world where doctors can quickfreeze some asshole's sperm and shoot it up her works with a turkey baster at her leisure. (delenda) As long as the bitch lives, the line lives, and while some things can be borne--must be borne, when there's no other choice, like the knowledge that the work will begin again in five hundred years and be just as doomed, or the inevitability that he'll be cornered in the laundry room again and again, or an eternity of impotent imprisonment locked just outside of all fulfillment--not that.You can live without a lot of things--without cold beer or pussy or a body or a voice or anything but a hateful will and two staring eyes--but you can't live without satisfaction, and the dead-end Arthur Eld's spawn has come to is the only satisfaction some eeeeeeee people have. (est)
The last guns of Gilead were laid down and must not be picked back up. (Let alone the other thing.)
So saith the dark side of the moon.
Much of it is lost on him; as he grows more incoherent (Carthago) nearly all of it (delenda) is. But he knows he needs to finish the job. He needs to GET OUT so he can GO HOME. (est.)
Finally, finally, as fall becomes winter, he figures out how to do it. Turns out it's easy to escape from prison.
You just have to learn to walk through walls.
Not because he's innocent--no, not even the slickest defense attorney going could've gotten him off this time, and this time Armand St. Clair did not have the slickest defense attorney going, he had Castle Rock's answer to a question nobody asked, a wet-behind-the-ears public defender who called the prosecutor Sully. Didn't matter. Armand was dead to rights on home invasion and three counts of attempted murder, the only one of six conspirators captured--three escaped, two dead and One Was Johnny. Thirty-nine years in that Shawshank Pen, and Armand will pushing his walker down Broadway if he ever sees New York again.
He doesn't belong here because it's the wrong world.
It took him a while to get it. At first he thought that the local yokels were fucking with him, about his car and his money; the different brand names he put down to Maine, fucking Maine, fucking godforsaken Maine, where people still sip Moxie and swat at the state bird while it chows down on them. But as spring becomes summer and his appeals are rejected (police fucking brutality, he never got proper treatment from where that little cunt shot him in the leg, and oh ain't it fun being a gimp in Shawshank) and the fucking Maine State Bird, the everloving mosquito, nummies down on his ass day and night, the election takes over everybody's attention, screws and fellow prisoners alike, and the problem becomes obvious.
Armand is not a political creature by nature, but he knows that fat fuck Al Gore was not the President when he pointed his car after the taillights of Rudy's El Camino and crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge out of New York and (ultimately) into Maine. He remembers not the names but the faces of some candidates, and they aren't right. Nothing is right. That's when Armand started to feel like there was some kind of hole in his head, a hole he can see when he looks just right. A hole in the middle of things. At night he lies in bed staring up at his cellmate's bunk and presses his fists against his eyes, trying not to see that awful hole and what lies beyond it. Presses his fists to his eyes until red circles bloom and stare back at him.
It's not long after that, that he gets the idea of wishing on the moon.
He's got to get out of Shawshank, and that is the truth. He's got to get home, back to the right New York, the real New York, or he's going to go crazy, and that is the truth. And the moon knows the answer, and that, too, is the truth. You've just got to catch it in the right mood. You've got to make a wish on the dark side of the moon, the new moon, as if God rolled his eye not to see the shitheap below, and the dark rime grows until the moon is a black gleaming ball in the sky.
The moon tells him how to get home; it's simple enough. He was brought here (to the wrong world) to do a job. When he finishes the job, he can go home to the right world. End of the line.
Just finish the job.
The thing is--once the moon has told him once, it kind of gets a hard-on about the idea. It gets to where he hears it all the time, day or night, on the can or in the showers or in the yard, the urgency worse than ever, he's got to get out, got to finish the job, kill the bitch--Carthago delenda est. He doesn't know what it means, but it becomes a theme, a throb in his brain as he limps across the yard or is bent over a washing machine by bigger and stronger men, eyes squeezed shut and those hateful red blooms staring at him with mockery and contempt.
Carthago delenda est. In other words: finish the job. In other words: kill the cunt. Kill the teenybopper bitch who fucked his leg up mos' righteous. (carthago) The half-breed nigger dyke with the itchy trigger finger has to die, the moon tells him, and NOW, while she's still young and stupid and confused. The mother isn't so important, she's dried up and rotting inside beside, the little doctors will cut her thread soon enough and she'll never squeeze out another gunslinger, but the other one is a problem. The other one, dyke or not, lives in a world where doctors can quickfreeze some asshole's sperm and shoot it up her works with a turkey baster at her leisure. (delenda) As long as the bitch lives, the line lives, and while some things can be borne--must be borne, when there's no other choice, like the knowledge that the work will begin again in five hundred years and be just as doomed, or the inevitability that he'll be cornered in the laundry room again and again, or an eternity of impotent imprisonment locked just outside of all fulfillment--not that.You can live without a lot of things--without cold beer or pussy or a body or a voice or anything but a hateful will and two staring eyes--but you can't live without satisfaction, and the dead-end Arthur Eld's spawn has come to is the only satisfaction some eeeeeeee people have. (est)
The last guns of Gilead were laid down and must not be picked back up. (Let alone the other thing.)
So saith the dark side of the moon.
Much of it is lost on him; as he grows more incoherent (Carthago) nearly all of it (delenda) is. But he knows he needs to finish the job. He needs to GET OUT so he can GO HOME. (est.)
Finally, finally, as fall becomes winter, he figures out how to do it. Turns out it's easy to escape from prison.
You just have to learn to walk through walls.