So there's a challenge - new rules - new nets to fly by. Stinging, tumblr back-linked nets which make my eyes twitch and my bowels churn. There's something to be said for going outside of one's comfort zone. If anything, I only write one way, so it's just a topic served with a side of universe and mythos - not so bad right? It's not a heroin needle. It's not a life sentence.
Synesthesia and Other Tragedies:
The branch of an almond tree scraped against the plastic wrap window of an old mobile home. A grey pot was boiling on a stove beside chipped blue Formica counter tops. A boy stretched his legs along three dryrotted steps in the Temecula sunlight, wringing out the stiffness.
He looked out across a field of similar homes dipping into the valley up to a freeway full to roaring with stopped cars. Some houses looked like shanties and others kept little gardens growing and looked pristine with fresh paint and short grass. The sun faced the boy as it lowed to the horizon, just beginning to color the sky.
A sound like coughing ground against the foundations under the steps. The boy gave a few quick smacks to the discolored wood beams.
"Let him go, comeon. Don't eat him. Come here." Amid scratching, a dog rustled through a hole of lattice in the foundation, tufts of rabbit hair in his teeth. The boy rubbed the dogs ears, brushing off the thick grime of mold and dust from his face past his blind eye. For a moment the grey eye guessed at its former blue and then reverted.
"What am I going to do with you?" said the boy, pulling himself up to glance at the stove's clock.
"I can be late" he said, walking inside the open door to take the pot off the stove. He turned and fished for some time in the freezer before dumping a few handfuls of ice into the pot. He swirled the pot as it crackled gently and set it down in the doorway at the top of the steps.
The dog ran to it, but the boy caught his snout in his hand.
"Watch the house, and you - don't burn yourself." The dog turned immediately to lap up the water, recoiling for a moment and then proceeding unhindered.
"Ugh, you're never going to learn. Love you. Watch the house."
He tucked a lighter into his jacket pocket and headed down the road. For a while he kicked his feet against the ground to hear the crunch of the gravel beside the pavement, and to see the rocks turn from grey to red-brown in the light. He saw the grass sometimes weeded and sometimes wild dotted here and there with little mushrooms growing out bleach white, looking out of place. They ought to have been red to match their poison.
As he came closer to the main drag he stopped, looking up and tugging at his coat to keep it straight and clean and black. He spied an old woman leaning out of her window for a smoke eyeing him.
"Keep watching lady. Get all angry about it." He smiled as he curled his fingers. The woman gave a choked gasp and fell back. By the time he came to the bus stop she was rubbing the glare from her eyes. He could nearly see her there clawing dizzily for a phone - world's always ending when kids walk down the street.
On the bus he watched the sun set and turn the sky a violent set of colors. An accident of air particles and the angles of light. Another bus, slower because of everyone coming off the freeway. Another set of colors, from red to blue with flutters of green neon haze. Not much to think about. He imagined people walking alongside the bus between the glares, and of his father looking out from bus windows glaring.
"You're going to have to deal with a lot of people who want to tag along. There's nothing worse than that." Of course there was never anything worse than whatever topic he had in mind at the moment.
"People at the stop just wait, they don't read, they don't better themselves. No one's going to help people who wait." Indistinct grumbling. "No one wants an honest days work if they think they've got the power. People like them and people like us. There are men who can move mountains. You should be one of those men."
He'd curl his hand around his books and shake his head. He could get mad about anything but nothing made him quite so uniquely mad as people waiting around. He hated wasted time. Soviet efficiency still drilled into his head or something.
The boy slid his hand along the shadow of his own breath on the windowpane, leaving a trail of yellow smoke dissipating into the blue of the nighttime.
Even this many years later he still didn't understand what his father stood for - which revolution he was waiting for. Always telling him to read the Fountainhead, while he waited for the world to work itself out.
Another bus stop. He walked the rest of the way through the neat grass of an apartment building, well lit and sour smelling.
"Hey man, wondered when you'd show up" came a voice half wheezing from a balcony one floor up.
"Took the scenic route" the boy replied, speeding his pace around the corner and up the stairwell, opening the door without hesitation. A few people lounging around, sour smell in the smoke filled air - introductions.
"That crash on the freeway, was that?"
The man from the balcony nodded,
"Yeah, Sam's always looking to make a scene. Did you see the concrete?"
"No I just saw the gridlock"
"Well what he did - it's a work of art - man. I'm glad he's on our side, you know."
"Hey I've had a long day can I get somethi-" the boy said, interrupted with a pat on the back by his host, medicine in hand.
"Already rolled it for you. Aren't I nice?" a cocky smile.
"Yeah, yeah. How much do I owe you?" he said.
A new face butted in, his left front tooth jutting out his mouth past his chin. Lisping harshly past his fang he said,
"Malik here said he owes you. He said your sister grew him shrooms that could pay off a mortgage."
Malik, giving the boy a light, nodded.
"He's not wrong, man. That was crazy stuff. No one's seen anything like them, if you can get your 'sister' growing them again we could be in business." He provided one hand of genteel air quotes with the word "sister."
The boy smiled exhaling slowly lungfuls of smoke. "That's not how it works, it was a lucky break, she's-"
"You told me that before and you came through for me. I think you don't give yourself credit. She's - volatile - I understand that. But anyone can be controlled."
The boy held the smoke in his mouth this time, peering around the room as it started to shift, gently, like a painted backdrop on a Hollywood backlot.
Malik pulled a pipe from his sleeve, filled with a dull looking slime.
"I didn't believe you the first time, when you said it could make you feel anyway you like. I thought you just didn't know about shrooms but god knows you've got gold with this. Make you feel anyway you want - there's money in that."
The boy chewed the stink from his teeth.
"Think about it. What do you have to lose? Remember the first time? Remember we went to that club."
He did remember - bits and pieces. A girl putting her fingers to his skin, burning with fire that didn't burn. A dart game played straight onto a man's back, bent over the bar, as he took shots and laughed unfazed. He remembered everyone there with a different type of scale or sinew or bone extruding. People with their whole bodies looking like stretched rubber, dribbling spittle which drifted off into the air like balloons. Beer mugs that frosted over when a woman walked by. Peoples voices in your head - more than there were people in the place.
Malik gave a sweeping gesture to the other men sitting in the den.
"We were the talk of the place. I'm telling you - they took us in the back. The girls, you know Jerry's girls, I swear to you when they saw him they took him by the hand, all they had on was their wings. Covering themselves and laughing. I swear I wasn't even making them do it - no mind tricks here."
"You make a good argument" said the boy, sitting down on an ottoman in the den, rubbing his forehead. He wondered if Malik had gotten better at working over his mind, or if he hadn't tried at all this time. Normally he heard a ringing noise. That was how he got his way, somehow. He knew that if he heard bells ringing it was too late and he couldn't say no. He couldn't say no to Malik, but there weren't any bells ringing now.
Malik crouched, handing the boy his pipe.
"It's time you got to work, man. You've got something here that no one else has."
"We all do. We're all just so special" said the boy.
"Yeah but this is something useful. Something that can get you a little further in life than making pretty colors show up when you want them to."
"Alright man - just - I'll see what I can do."
Malik offered the boy a light, but he recoiled, pulling his own lighter from his jacket pocket. He stayed a while. He blew smoke in rings of orange and red, avocado green as it trailed from his nostrils. He made the fire of his lighter turn blue - and then every light in the room. He showed how he whitened his teeth and made his hair dark or light.
The others talked for a while about their plans - about Sam's display on the freeway - no news on where he ended up after that. The man with the fang showed he could bite through a phonebook - another man disappeared entirely into a cloud of smoke. This was the company to keep, for understanding, for protection.
He left in the dark with the stars spinning overhead. A bus, the long way round - he saw the cars still stuck on the freeway. At the second change he knew a walk would clear his head. Up past the familiar mobile homes going dim - past the mushrooms red on the ground like spilled paint. Finally he came to his steps. The door was closed. The pot of water still sat on the steps - the water floating an island of fuzzing grime. He picked it up and walked to the kitchen, his stomach buckling with the memory of food.
He dumped out the water and filled the pot again in the sink, turning the stove as hot as it could muster. He fished in a cabinet full of cans. Corned beef with a red label. Can opener. He sat down at the kitchen table twisting away at the can like he was whittling wood.
It turned and turned on the magnet and creaked and sputtered a little pink congealed fat. Half opened he wrestled with the slip of an opening he had. Welded shut three quarters of the way, just enough open to let the air in to spoil the can. He wrenched with his hands, his fingers turning blue and the can's red label fading to white suddenly. Dammit. The opener couldn't catch the edge, it turned and turned. His face reddened as he pressed hard against the metal. Damn damn. Wedge something in, peel it like a sardine lid. Nothing. Constant pressure just to bend the metal - nothing to give, the fat slipping out and his hands can't grip. Nothing. Dammit dammit. Metal bent enough to bare its frayed teeth but not enough to see the pink contents which oozed all over. The blue Formica counter tops turned red. Red creeping out from the corners came up everywhere. Veins bulged in the boys neck in the red light in the red room.
"Damn" he spat, as his greased fingers slipped past the ragged opening. Blood. He got up and tossed the can at the stove. He sucked at his fingers - the iron taste of blood and the heavy dulling flavor of the fat on his fingers. The red color receded from the walls. He wiped his forehead with the arm of his coat.
The pot, half on the stove, began to just shimmer with heat. He gave the can of corned beef a cursory spin but turned, continuing to suck the juice from his fingers. He stood for a while before he heard rustling from the floorboards. He'd woken her. He stepped out the door to sit on the steps.
From the hole in the lattice foundation a hand extended, followed, serpentlike by a mudcaked arm and the face of a young girl spotted with mushrooms growing from her cheeks. As she stood slender caps of morels sprung up around her feet.
"Hey sis. Come here." he said, patting the wood next to him on the steps. The girl moved to sit with him, the wood curling with soft moss as she did. He put his arm around her. The grass in front of them turned pink and purple, and the girl giggled. The boy moved his hand slowly back and forth in the air as the colors shifted.
"So sis - did you make anything today?" He asked. The girl tucked her head into her shoulder, pointing with one toe.
The body of a rabbit sat a few feet away, perforated with little buds of mushrooms.
"That's what you two were fighting over." He felt the air getting thick, as it always did with her.
The girl gave a gummy half-open grin and shook herself side to side. The boy started to cough and the girl stood up, walking backwards to look at her brother. Between her toes mushroom caps squirmed. Her legs were matted with mud and sick smelling mold. Not wanting to turn away she tripped, catching herself with a shocked expression, before erupting into giggles.
The boy, still coughing harshly, waved her off, before she got to her knees and slithered through the hole in the foundation.
He got up and turned back to the boiling pot. He got a knife to try and tear out corned beef from the torn opening of the can. He coughed and wiped his red eyes - the assault of spores was never pleasant. He dipped his knife into the can's slim opening and licked the tip.
You should be one of those men. There are men who can move mountains. Men who can tear down the bridges on freeways and put thoughts in you head with a ringing bell. Men whose reaction to a half-opened can isn't changing the color of the label. No one's going to help people who wait.
The boy poured the boiling water into a mug, touching it with his finger to turn it rich coffee brown. He sniffed it, expecting a scent. He turned the sticky can of corned beef over in his hand, leaning back in his chair. Little golden figures appeared on the walls - glinting white stars and trees heavy with silhouetted blossoms. A parade of candy-colored animals swirling swiftly into night. He watched the shadows turn to purple and green and yellow on the walls, and move in brilliant surges through the house for his delight.
Review:
Not particularly functional as fan fiction.
The original point of view for this story was actually going to be Malik. I might still write that if the mood struck me - it was a look at how life is for someone who can literally control minds, and how rapidly it overtakes one's life - until you're not so much a God as someone trapped in a world without variety and find yourself completely alone because you won't allow other people to act as free agents - they become simply mirrors of yourself. In the periphery of that story was a young boy convinced without said mind control to do something vaguely sinister and it spiraled out from there.
The major theme? Life is unfair. We hit the ground running - the opening scene is the opening scene of the Book of Jeremiah, where God politely tells the eponymous prophet Jeremiah that everything is going to go to shit and it's up to Jeremiah to spread the word. The boiling pot to the north is the wrath which is going to be unleashed. I like the image of Jeremiah because he's a prophet that's unfit for prophethood, and knows it. He fears the powers that be more than he loves them - it's a fairly unhealthy relationship. Of course, I would have a thing for "the weeping prophet."
So we have our Jeremiah facing some future wrath in a mobile home park in Temecula - as mundane a place as there is on this Earth. Parts of Temecula are gorgeous - the mobile home park which inspired this location I can assure you is not. It's among the blandest locations I've ever seen in my life, and I'm currently living in an unbroken series of wheat farms, so I know bland.
There's a fair amount of ambiguity - you wouldn't realize at the beginning that he's not talking to his dog - he's talking to his sister. His sister's presence is first foreshadowed by the mold on the dog's eye. Mold is inherently off putting for whatever reason - it only grows on dead things and curls its tendrils through the humus - it travels via invisible spores and it's a symbol of decay and unceasing corruption. He's boiling the water to kill off the spores just to give the dog something to drink - but even if you didn't know of his sister's influence it serves to show that he doesn't live in a place with clean water to drink. Coupled with a plastic wrap window it's a vision of poverty.
The dog's blind eye is the first example of the boy's preternatural ability, which is merely changing the color of things. This is about as subtle as it gets, and about as maddeningly unhelpful a power as any person could be given.
He takes his lighter as a small amulet against future evils - but he knows where he's going and why.
Kid walking down the street - that could be fairly topical if you've got a political slant, though that's a bit of a stretch. We only see the woman from his perspective, so whatever he does to make her fall (a sudden change of color to disorient her? a shadow moving suddenly across the ground? the possibilities are endless) doesn't get fully shown. He's not a saint, here, but he's done nothing terribly wrong so far.
The freeway, looming in the distance as it does in literally any vantage point in the cities of Southern California, has been stopped by something, slowing the already slothlike trip this boy is taking. We have time for a J. Alfred Prufrock reference (and another example of the boy's power) and memories of a father. The boy's current age is indistinct.
We only see the father as the boy remembers him - perpetually bitter. He's fond of Ayn Rand which is enough to make any man a certain type of villain but here he just comes off as bitter. Whatever vision he had for his son has not been matched by reality. The boy, it seems, does little else but wait. He believes his father to be a hypocrite, similarly waiting for the world to change somehow. We have no idea if his father had any inhuman power.
We come to a smoke-filled den - a setting that brings its own air of disrepute. The man with the fang is fairly devilish, but Malik is the one making offers. As drug dealers go he's calm and fairly polite. He has confidence enough to be patient. He promises resources without needing to rely on threats, which to me fits the psychology of someone who doesn't have to deal with no.
For a moment he reminds the boy about some former deal or tryst that made him the toast of a mutant club. The girls wearing nothing but wings brings up another judaic parallel, this time Isaiah, who was touched on the lips by a burning coal. Isaiah was then given the fun job of telling the world that... no one would listen to him. More futility.
Why do I call them Jerry's girls? Is this a reference to the musical compilation of the works of Jerry Herman? Is this an implication that the winged women were drag queens? Does this have any relevance on the plot? So many questions.
We see that Malik has a power of persuasion - strangely absent here. We also learn about the boy's sister and her penchant for mushrooms (a variation of the traditional psylocibin variety which inspires so many a kooky hallucinatory drug trip in various comedies - I should mention those mushrooms aren't a big money drug)
Here things come to the real crux of the matter - this is a world where people have power to change things. Our protagonist has, at best, an extension of synesthesia. Sucks.
The return trip drives the point home. We find the mushrooms have turned red (another execution of the boy's power), but otherwise it's a long and lonely and calm trip. We see why he has to boil the water - in the time he's been away it's turned stagnant and fungal. A good symbol of the caustic properties of poverty. You can't just let things be and just "go and make money" as so many people insist - if you leave you'll come back to things decaying and breaking down because they aren't of sufficient quality.
When he gets home, hungry and conflicted, he gets to take it out on a can of corned beef - the utter depths of the futility of his existence.
But we get a slight reprieve. We meet the sister - living beneath the house - emerging like a Dryad or nature goddess, things growing at her feet. She is mute and perhaps not well. It's a short meeting, as he immediately begins to cough and wheeze. Not only is he stuck with powers that do him little good, he lives alongside a person who's powers are an active detriment to his life. She seems sweet enough - but where was her sympathy for the rabbit? Since she doesn't speak it's hard to gauge her intelligence or self awareness or even her humanity. She's literally kept under the floorboards, but is seemingly still kind with her brother - she may be only slightly more functional than the dog.
The boiling pot from the beginning has been turned into insipid tasteless coffee. That is the wrath of god that's waiting. It's not been a good day, but we're left with a visage of Mardi Gras colors dancing - there's some happiness still to be found here. His power is a new end of imagination, and for him as for so many - imagination can bring some joy - but can't pay the bills. Still, we end on the word delight. If we hold him to the morality of his father the boy is a failure. Perhaps he's found peace and contentedness - perhaps contentedness is the worst possible thing in the world.
The title was originally going to be The Book of Thoth. I'll keep that for Malik's story.
The branch of an almond tree scraped against the plastic wrap window of an old mobile home. A grey pot was boiling on a stove beside chipped blue Formica counter tops. A boy stretched his legs along three dryrotted steps in the Temecula sunlight, wringing out the stiffness.
He looked out across a field of similar homes dipping into the valley up to a freeway full to roaring with stopped cars. Some houses looked like shanties and others kept little gardens growing and looked pristine with fresh paint and short grass. The sun faced the boy as it lowed to the horizon, just beginning to color the sky.
A sound like coughing ground against the foundations under the steps. The boy gave a few quick smacks to the discolored wood beams.
"Let him go, comeon. Don't eat him. Come here." Amid scratching, a dog rustled through a hole of lattice in the foundation, tufts of rabbit hair in his teeth. The boy rubbed the dogs ears, brushing off the thick grime of mold and dust from his face past his blind eye. For a moment the grey eye guessed at its former blue and then reverted.
"What am I going to do with you?" said the boy, pulling himself up to glance at the stove's clock.
"I can be late" he said, walking inside the open door to take the pot off the stove. He turned and fished for some time in the freezer before dumping a few handfuls of ice into the pot. He swirled the pot as it crackled gently and set it down in the doorway at the top of the steps.
The dog ran to it, but the boy caught his snout in his hand.
"Watch the house, and you - don't burn yourself." The dog turned immediately to lap up the water, recoiling for a moment and then proceeding unhindered.
"Ugh, you're never going to learn. Love you. Watch the house."
He tucked a lighter into his jacket pocket and headed down the road. For a while he kicked his feet against the ground to hear the crunch of the gravel beside the pavement, and to see the rocks turn from grey to red-brown in the light. He saw the grass sometimes weeded and sometimes wild dotted here and there with little mushrooms growing out bleach white, looking out of place. They ought to have been red to match their poison.
As he came closer to the main drag he stopped, looking up and tugging at his coat to keep it straight and clean and black. He spied an old woman leaning out of her window for a smoke eyeing him.
"Keep watching lady. Get all angry about it." He smiled as he curled his fingers. The woman gave a choked gasp and fell back. By the time he came to the bus stop she was rubbing the glare from her eyes. He could nearly see her there clawing dizzily for a phone - world's always ending when kids walk down the street.
On the bus he watched the sun set and turn the sky a violent set of colors. An accident of air particles and the angles of light. Another bus, slower because of everyone coming off the freeway. Another set of colors, from red to blue with flutters of green neon haze. Not much to think about. He imagined people walking alongside the bus between the glares, and of his father looking out from bus windows glaring.
"You're going to have to deal with a lot of people who want to tag along. There's nothing worse than that." Of course there was never anything worse than whatever topic he had in mind at the moment.
"People at the stop just wait, they don't read, they don't better themselves. No one's going to help people who wait." Indistinct grumbling. "No one wants an honest days work if they think they've got the power. People like them and people like us. There are men who can move mountains. You should be one of those men."
He'd curl his hand around his books and shake his head. He could get mad about anything but nothing made him quite so uniquely mad as people waiting around. He hated wasted time. Soviet efficiency still drilled into his head or something.
The boy slid his hand along the shadow of his own breath on the windowpane, leaving a trail of yellow smoke dissipating into the blue of the nighttime.
Even this many years later he still didn't understand what his father stood for - which revolution he was waiting for. Always telling him to read the Fountainhead, while he waited for the world to work itself out.
Another bus stop. He walked the rest of the way through the neat grass of an apartment building, well lit and sour smelling.
"Hey man, wondered when you'd show up" came a voice half wheezing from a balcony one floor up.
"Took the scenic route" the boy replied, speeding his pace around the corner and up the stairwell, opening the door without hesitation. A few people lounging around, sour smell in the smoke filled air - introductions.
"That crash on the freeway, was that?"
The man from the balcony nodded,
"Yeah, Sam's always looking to make a scene. Did you see the concrete?"
"No I just saw the gridlock"
"Well what he did - it's a work of art - man. I'm glad he's on our side, you know."
"Hey I've had a long day can I get somethi-" the boy said, interrupted with a pat on the back by his host, medicine in hand.
"Already rolled it for you. Aren't I nice?" a cocky smile.
"Yeah, yeah. How much do I owe you?" he said.
A new face butted in, his left front tooth jutting out his mouth past his chin. Lisping harshly past his fang he said,
"Malik here said he owes you. He said your sister grew him shrooms that could pay off a mortgage."
Malik, giving the boy a light, nodded.
"He's not wrong, man. That was crazy stuff. No one's seen anything like them, if you can get your 'sister' growing them again we could be in business." He provided one hand of genteel air quotes with the word "sister."
The boy smiled exhaling slowly lungfuls of smoke. "That's not how it works, it was a lucky break, she's-"
"You told me that before and you came through for me. I think you don't give yourself credit. She's - volatile - I understand that. But anyone can be controlled."
The boy held the smoke in his mouth this time, peering around the room as it started to shift, gently, like a painted backdrop on a Hollywood backlot.
Malik pulled a pipe from his sleeve, filled with a dull looking slime.
"I didn't believe you the first time, when you said it could make you feel anyway you like. I thought you just didn't know about shrooms but god knows you've got gold with this. Make you feel anyway you want - there's money in that."
The boy chewed the stink from his teeth.
"Think about it. What do you have to lose? Remember the first time? Remember we went to that club."
He did remember - bits and pieces. A girl putting her fingers to his skin, burning with fire that didn't burn. A dart game played straight onto a man's back, bent over the bar, as he took shots and laughed unfazed. He remembered everyone there with a different type of scale or sinew or bone extruding. People with their whole bodies looking like stretched rubber, dribbling spittle which drifted off into the air like balloons. Beer mugs that frosted over when a woman walked by. Peoples voices in your head - more than there were people in the place.
Malik gave a sweeping gesture to the other men sitting in the den.
"We were the talk of the place. I'm telling you - they took us in the back. The girls, you know Jerry's girls, I swear to you when they saw him they took him by the hand, all they had on was their wings. Covering themselves and laughing. I swear I wasn't even making them do it - no mind tricks here."
"You make a good argument" said the boy, sitting down on an ottoman in the den, rubbing his forehead. He wondered if Malik had gotten better at working over his mind, or if he hadn't tried at all this time. Normally he heard a ringing noise. That was how he got his way, somehow. He knew that if he heard bells ringing it was too late and he couldn't say no. He couldn't say no to Malik, but there weren't any bells ringing now.
Malik crouched, handing the boy his pipe.
"It's time you got to work, man. You've got something here that no one else has."
"We all do. We're all just so special" said the boy.
"Yeah but this is something useful. Something that can get you a little further in life than making pretty colors show up when you want them to."
"Alright man - just - I'll see what I can do."
Malik offered the boy a light, but he recoiled, pulling his own lighter from his jacket pocket. He stayed a while. He blew smoke in rings of orange and red, avocado green as it trailed from his nostrils. He made the fire of his lighter turn blue - and then every light in the room. He showed how he whitened his teeth and made his hair dark or light.
The others talked for a while about their plans - about Sam's display on the freeway - no news on where he ended up after that. The man with the fang showed he could bite through a phonebook - another man disappeared entirely into a cloud of smoke. This was the company to keep, for understanding, for protection.
He left in the dark with the stars spinning overhead. A bus, the long way round - he saw the cars still stuck on the freeway. At the second change he knew a walk would clear his head. Up past the familiar mobile homes going dim - past the mushrooms red on the ground like spilled paint. Finally he came to his steps. The door was closed. The pot of water still sat on the steps - the water floating an island of fuzzing grime. He picked it up and walked to the kitchen, his stomach buckling with the memory of food.
He dumped out the water and filled the pot again in the sink, turning the stove as hot as it could muster. He fished in a cabinet full of cans. Corned beef with a red label. Can opener. He sat down at the kitchen table twisting away at the can like he was whittling wood.
It turned and turned on the magnet and creaked and sputtered a little pink congealed fat. Half opened he wrestled with the slip of an opening he had. Welded shut three quarters of the way, just enough open to let the air in to spoil the can. He wrenched with his hands, his fingers turning blue and the can's red label fading to white suddenly. Dammit. The opener couldn't catch the edge, it turned and turned. His face reddened as he pressed hard against the metal. Damn damn. Wedge something in, peel it like a sardine lid. Nothing. Constant pressure just to bend the metal - nothing to give, the fat slipping out and his hands can't grip. Nothing. Dammit dammit. Metal bent enough to bare its frayed teeth but not enough to see the pink contents which oozed all over. The blue Formica counter tops turned red. Red creeping out from the corners came up everywhere. Veins bulged in the boys neck in the red light in the red room.
"Damn" he spat, as his greased fingers slipped past the ragged opening. Blood. He got up and tossed the can at the stove. He sucked at his fingers - the iron taste of blood and the heavy dulling flavor of the fat on his fingers. The red color receded from the walls. He wiped his forehead with the arm of his coat.
The pot, half on the stove, began to just shimmer with heat. He gave the can of corned beef a cursory spin but turned, continuing to suck the juice from his fingers. He stood for a while before he heard rustling from the floorboards. He'd woken her. He stepped out the door to sit on the steps.
From the hole in the lattice foundation a hand extended, followed, serpentlike by a mudcaked arm and the face of a young girl spotted with mushrooms growing from her cheeks. As she stood slender caps of morels sprung up around her feet.
"Hey sis. Come here." he said, patting the wood next to him on the steps. The girl moved to sit with him, the wood curling with soft moss as she did. He put his arm around her. The grass in front of them turned pink and purple, and the girl giggled. The boy moved his hand slowly back and forth in the air as the colors shifted.
"So sis - did you make anything today?" He asked. The girl tucked her head into her shoulder, pointing with one toe.
The body of a rabbit sat a few feet away, perforated with little buds of mushrooms.
"That's what you two were fighting over." He felt the air getting thick, as it always did with her.
The girl gave a gummy half-open grin and shook herself side to side. The boy started to cough and the girl stood up, walking backwards to look at her brother. Between her toes mushroom caps squirmed. Her legs were matted with mud and sick smelling mold. Not wanting to turn away she tripped, catching herself with a shocked expression, before erupting into giggles.
The boy, still coughing harshly, waved her off, before she got to her knees and slithered through the hole in the foundation.
He got up and turned back to the boiling pot. He got a knife to try and tear out corned beef from the torn opening of the can. He coughed and wiped his red eyes - the assault of spores was never pleasant. He dipped his knife into the can's slim opening and licked the tip.
You should be one of those men. There are men who can move mountains. Men who can tear down the bridges on freeways and put thoughts in you head with a ringing bell. Men whose reaction to a half-opened can isn't changing the color of the label. No one's going to help people who wait.
The boy poured the boiling water into a mug, touching it with his finger to turn it rich coffee brown. He sniffed it, expecting a scent. He turned the sticky can of corned beef over in his hand, leaning back in his chair. Little golden figures appeared on the walls - glinting white stars and trees heavy with silhouetted blossoms. A parade of candy-colored animals swirling swiftly into night. He watched the shadows turn to purple and green and yellow on the walls, and move in brilliant surges through the house for his delight.
Review:
Not particularly functional as fan fiction.
The original point of view for this story was actually going to be Malik. I might still write that if the mood struck me - it was a look at how life is for someone who can literally control minds, and how rapidly it overtakes one's life - until you're not so much a God as someone trapped in a world without variety and find yourself completely alone because you won't allow other people to act as free agents - they become simply mirrors of yourself. In the periphery of that story was a young boy convinced without said mind control to do something vaguely sinister and it spiraled out from there.
The major theme? Life is unfair. We hit the ground running - the opening scene is the opening scene of the Book of Jeremiah, where God politely tells the eponymous prophet Jeremiah that everything is going to go to shit and it's up to Jeremiah to spread the word. The boiling pot to the north is the wrath which is going to be unleashed. I like the image of Jeremiah because he's a prophet that's unfit for prophethood, and knows it. He fears the powers that be more than he loves them - it's a fairly unhealthy relationship. Of course, I would have a thing for "the weeping prophet."
So we have our Jeremiah facing some future wrath in a mobile home park in Temecula - as mundane a place as there is on this Earth. Parts of Temecula are gorgeous - the mobile home park which inspired this location I can assure you is not. It's among the blandest locations I've ever seen in my life, and I'm currently living in an unbroken series of wheat farms, so I know bland.
There's a fair amount of ambiguity - you wouldn't realize at the beginning that he's not talking to his dog - he's talking to his sister. His sister's presence is first foreshadowed by the mold on the dog's eye. Mold is inherently off putting for whatever reason - it only grows on dead things and curls its tendrils through the humus - it travels via invisible spores and it's a symbol of decay and unceasing corruption. He's boiling the water to kill off the spores just to give the dog something to drink - but even if you didn't know of his sister's influence it serves to show that he doesn't live in a place with clean water to drink. Coupled with a plastic wrap window it's a vision of poverty.
The dog's blind eye is the first example of the boy's preternatural ability, which is merely changing the color of things. This is about as subtle as it gets, and about as maddeningly unhelpful a power as any person could be given.
He takes his lighter as a small amulet against future evils - but he knows where he's going and why.
Kid walking down the street - that could be fairly topical if you've got a political slant, though that's a bit of a stretch. We only see the woman from his perspective, so whatever he does to make her fall (a sudden change of color to disorient her? a shadow moving suddenly across the ground? the possibilities are endless) doesn't get fully shown. He's not a saint, here, but he's done nothing terribly wrong so far.
The freeway, looming in the distance as it does in literally any vantage point in the cities of Southern California, has been stopped by something, slowing the already slothlike trip this boy is taking. We have time for a J. Alfred Prufrock reference (and another example of the boy's power) and memories of a father. The boy's current age is indistinct.
We only see the father as the boy remembers him - perpetually bitter. He's fond of Ayn Rand which is enough to make any man a certain type of villain but here he just comes off as bitter. Whatever vision he had for his son has not been matched by reality. The boy, it seems, does little else but wait. He believes his father to be a hypocrite, similarly waiting for the world to change somehow. We have no idea if his father had any inhuman power.
We come to a smoke-filled den - a setting that brings its own air of disrepute. The man with the fang is fairly devilish, but Malik is the one making offers. As drug dealers go he's calm and fairly polite. He has confidence enough to be patient. He promises resources without needing to rely on threats, which to me fits the psychology of someone who doesn't have to deal with no.
For a moment he reminds the boy about some former deal or tryst that made him the toast of a mutant club. The girls wearing nothing but wings brings up another judaic parallel, this time Isaiah, who was touched on the lips by a burning coal. Isaiah was then given the fun job of telling the world that... no one would listen to him. More futility.
Why do I call them Jerry's girls? Is this a reference to the musical compilation of the works of Jerry Herman? Is this an implication that the winged women were drag queens? Does this have any relevance on the plot? So many questions.
We see that Malik has a power of persuasion - strangely absent here. We also learn about the boy's sister and her penchant for mushrooms (a variation of the traditional psylocibin variety which inspires so many a kooky hallucinatory drug trip in various comedies - I should mention those mushrooms aren't a big money drug)
Here things come to the real crux of the matter - this is a world where people have power to change things. Our protagonist has, at best, an extension of synesthesia. Sucks.
The return trip drives the point home. We find the mushrooms have turned red (another execution of the boy's power), but otherwise it's a long and lonely and calm trip. We see why he has to boil the water - in the time he's been away it's turned stagnant and fungal. A good symbol of the caustic properties of poverty. You can't just let things be and just "go and make money" as so many people insist - if you leave you'll come back to things decaying and breaking down because they aren't of sufficient quality.
When he gets home, hungry and conflicted, he gets to take it out on a can of corned beef - the utter depths of the futility of his existence.
But we get a slight reprieve. We meet the sister - living beneath the house - emerging like a Dryad or nature goddess, things growing at her feet. She is mute and perhaps not well. It's a short meeting, as he immediately begins to cough and wheeze. Not only is he stuck with powers that do him little good, he lives alongside a person who's powers are an active detriment to his life. She seems sweet enough - but where was her sympathy for the rabbit? Since she doesn't speak it's hard to gauge her intelligence or self awareness or even her humanity. She's literally kept under the floorboards, but is seemingly still kind with her brother - she may be only slightly more functional than the dog.
The boiling pot from the beginning has been turned into insipid tasteless coffee. That is the wrath of god that's waiting. It's not been a good day, but we're left with a visage of Mardi Gras colors dancing - there's some happiness still to be found here. His power is a new end of imagination, and for him as for so many - imagination can bring some joy - but can't pay the bills. Still, we end on the word delight. If we hold him to the morality of his father the boy is a failure. Perhaps he's found peace and contentedness - perhaps contentedness is the worst possible thing in the world.
The title was originally going to be The Book of Thoth. I'll keep that for Malik's story.
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