Untitled (standard:other, 797 words)
Author: ben	Added: Sep 17 2000	Views/Reads: 4024/1	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A reading experience

Corn cobs and a rotten smell are pared twice. In the first instance the
corn cobs are finely chopped and the smell reminds one of mold. I don't 
know why, but cows actually like silage. However as I gazed up at the 
light which was coming down from the hole in the cracked boards through 
which I fell, and fingered the whole corn cob in my hand, I stifled the 
desire to breathe knowing full well that the acrid reach which waited 
for me to breathe smelled far worse than silage. There was no question 
that this locale was old. Toilet paper had replaced leaves and corn 
cobs for this use decades ago. The age explained why the boards over 
which I had been trying to walk had fallen apart like that paper when 
wet. At this point in time only one course of action was left before 
me: Get out. 

After much trouble and a couple of hours, I had succeeded not only
caving in the hole in which I had been trapped but also freeing my self 
from its clutches, but not it's odder. The original coloring of my 
clothes was impossible to tell by looking at them due to the black of 
the dirt and the brown that I will let you guess at. I remembered a 
small creak not to far back along the path. I turned and headed 
straight for it, not caring in the slightest that quite probably each 
and every piece of clothing was labeled dry clean only (not that I 
could check considering the filth). I would probably lose my deposit at 
the tux shop where I had rented my attire, not that any loss of money 
would affect my view of the foreseeable future, a future without her. 
She always seemed to smell of lilacs. Her auburn hair cascading -- NO. 
I was not going to think of her. She left me. On our wedding day she 
left in the middle of the service. I flopped down in the water and 
started to wriggle out of my soiled clothes. The inside of my 
cummerbund somehow managed to stay clean showing the blue print with 
which she had sculpted the dress she had been wearing this morning. 

Our life was to have been so perfect. She was a famous actress,
collecting millions from her many successes, and I was a writer who had 
my own fortune from science fiction novels. In spite of what could have 
been, I had but one concern: washing the excrement from my hair, and 
its stench from my body. After bathing I hung my clothes from a near by 
tree and lay to dry myself on the brown grass in the summer heat. I 
slept. 

When waking I dressed and walked back to where I had parked my car
before the wedding. I placed my key in the ignition and started the 
car, wishing all the while that somebody had connected a bomb to the 
starter, sliced the brake lines, or had in some way insured that I 
would never reach home. To my utter dismay I reached home safely and 
alone. I headed to the bathroom medicine cabinet to take a large 
quantity of whatever pills I found there and go to bed and never wake 
up. I found a single dose of ibuprofen and an untouched bottle of 
vitamin C. I left them both, and ran to jump out of the window, but it 
had bars on it and was in a window well. I cried. I loved her. I love 
her. Why did she leave me? What had I done to hurt her? I crawled into 
bed willing to never wake up. 

That night I dreamt that she hadn't left me, that on the way to New York
that our plane had crashed in Montana and that in the hospital every 
one kept reassuring me that every thing was fine: Alicia had died a 
slow painful death, but my heart was splattered across the ceiling, 
still beating. It had exploded when I threw it into the glaring lights 
over the operating table where I lay as they sewed my limbs back on to 
my body. 

Suddenly I was being shaken awake. Alicia was sitting next to me on the
bed, shaking me. I wrapped my arms around her, not caring in the 
slightest about any thing. She had come back to me. My Alicia had come 
back to me. She had made lunch. Suddenly my alarm went off. I woke with 
a bad romance novel and a pencil in one hand and a paper headed journal 
#2 in my other hand. I released I was late for math class, and that in 
a pinch a bad dream can pass for homework.  


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