Crap of Tom

I sort of already get it about kids.
It's a mystery solved for me.
They don't
fascinate me.
I'm looking
here his chin jutted back over his shoulder and his eyes looked behind him, but to a place that signified "ahead" or "beyond."
I'm looking thata way. Someone has to.
That's a load of crap, answered Sylvia.

Manual Agent

Sylvia sometimes felt like nothing more than a manual agent. She had no connections with the higher ups at Pharm-Supply. She only had contact with a member, so to speak. She wondered, as she was meeting his most basic needs, if she would ever become a distributor. Tom held onto his stash with remarkable determination, however, so Sylvia strained priuslong and only wanted sleep.

Time is a Liar

Tom thought he might have mono [nucleosis]. His emotions seemed to have escaped from his nervous system/soul/whatever into the physical organ. "Everyone's trapped in a capsule," he theorized. It's comforting when you think the odds are against you. To remember that we are all the unhatched eggs of Mthyuh. Everyone has to see out their eyes and hear with their ears and digest their own food. Everyone has to dread getting in the shower some days because you don't know what you'll see next.

Undergrounded

Tom dreamt that he stooped over and did a somersault in the air and kept tumbling upward until he was flying flat out over the clouds looking down at what one of us might see looking out the window of a modern airliner even though neither he nor anyone else had yet been in that spot and lived. He looked at the bumps and smears and veins and trails and hanging mists and cracks and wrinkles suspended in the complicated vapor scape and decided that, as a part of nature, as he, as well as his language were a part of nature that it, as much as anything else that he could speak or otherwise create, must have meaning.

If he strained his neck, much as if one of us, a taller one of us, would have to do to see out the window of a modern airliner all the way to the horizon, he could see the line between the cloud cover and the sky and this too spoke to him; it meant that there was indeed a line, a limit. He had been drinking a little bit that night and feeling still emotional, like someone slammed back into the world after they thought they were already dead, so a high sound came out from the back of his throat as he slept, like a teakettle, and burning water squirted from Pink Squishy pads in the corners of his eyes.

The concept was since he was a natural animal and the clouds that hung in the sky below him or the air that he breathed were also natural, just as natural was the language which grew out of him, that he spit and spewed, as Real as Phlegm, and it would be arrogant to think there was no meaning in any of it.

When Tom woke up, it turned out he actually was on a plane. He sighed and saw his breath on the glass of the little oval window. He realized that some of his previous breaths might even be contained in the broken-up Chunks of Orange and brown clouds he was flying over now. There were veins of snow on the Brown Dirt that covered the planet west of the Chanks. The White Veins seemed to follow the water runoff. He could probably see millions of trees from that vantage point. When snow became general, water running was marked with the absence of snow. He had not yet seen an animal, but as far as he could see there was only terrain with trees and rocks and snow, and then no rocks, which seemed like a place where animals would want to go.

Warm Green Monolith

Tom was walking down a wide empty Dhubbabera windy boulevard, his pants flapping. It was disorienting not to have to go anywhere in particular except what one had planned out for oneself, and that type was the most breakable of oaths.

So his thoughts took over. Only when he forced himself to admire the towering desert chank, blurred with a haze of spring olive verdance, did he feel that he existed as himself in that place, and in any case, that was not a pleasant thing. His mind operated as a spring this way, snapping back almost audibly after an intensive moment of pessimistic concentration before the sharply pending withdrawal. A whip. You wouldn't always want to be the object of that studied, cringing fronting off with reality.

So when a young German widow, furtive, herself disoriented, chilled by the wind in the shadow of the warm green mountain, blurted out, "Are you familiar here?" he saw the look of fright on her face and didn't want to be the cause of something like that, so he deliberately brightened up his mood, from within, allowing her innocence and vulnerability to spur on a sympathetic view of life, a view of life's delicateness, which ended up showing in his face and reassuring her.

It's back that way, he pointed. See the golden building? She'd asked him for the casino.

Then his walk continued and he did not snap immediately back into internal patter. He was crossing the shadow line on the sidewalk. Wind seemed to buffet him from all directions. There was brightness and bright color, magenta blue pink green yellow blossoms and their fragrance. As water sprang into his eyes stingingly, he imagined all of the dead who loved him standing in chorus and encouragement. But also in envy.

He felt responsible to use all of his senses, just for their sake, for a few moments longer.

2: In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

IX. Truckon ROL.
i-proli havia. You read the Have You Experienced? pages in the paper daily. Most symptoms of most paradigms sound familiar, and you are on three or more rest-o-life doses daily. This is not a disorder. You may continue on with your life as normal, and your prognosis is positive. Why be a loser? You may expand over the years, through self-discovery, your daily regimen of wonders.

MMXLCCIX. Speed.
hunger. Remember when chicks worried about their weight just went ahead and got scripts for Black Beauties and Preludant? Fuck yeah they rocked. They like a talkie all night, makeup, stocked up on supplies. Speed freak chicks just want to hang and rag, maybe sixteen hours at a time.

CCCVII. Solids Plus.
superficiality. It's a way into deepness. The whole metrosexual thing. But not like South Park did it. More of an antidepressant. Real, physical things and how they are is real and present. You can grasp on to solids, and after all, you are one. Your premier lifewonder for today's premium rewards of your prime. Live a little. It's decadent, which means highly satisfactory.

VI. Nest.
cohesia. You believe there to be links of causality and intention between disparate entities. There is a pattern forming: of events, behavior which seem to share a purpose, though any number of motivations and consequences could be, with some effort, applied to each individual occurrence. Hanging in space, however, they would still create a shape. You are not a star. Keep it real. Nest is your ticket to everyday living.

Tom and Sylvia make contact.

Then they did the torture where they spin you around very fast in an office chair-like contraption, then stop you suddenly and spin you even faster the other way. How can I be so important? she murmured, bloody spittle strung across her cheeks and hair. Then she realized: she wasn't that important at all. The torture was completely automated. This was sort of like a car wash whereas before it would have taken an entire team of ensemble actors. Soon it would spit her out on a lawn behind a post office or a school. Not soon enough... she was going to faint... not soon...

What? What was that? A tiny package, a vial... by her foot. She thought she had hallucinated it, but no. It had come rolling across the floor and under--into--mother's shoe. No-Shiv. The red box.

Tom and Sylvia stood holding one another in the parking lot.

In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

Tom and Sylvia sat in the waiting room at Pharm-Supply browsing through old catalogues. Way beyond lipsticks, the most curious pages were the symptom and scripting breakdowns for the shivtropics. Their real reason was to see about breaking Peggy out or smuggling a box of No-Shiv in to her.

CLXXIV. Blyway
Neurodigm. You have many interests which you focus on intensely. You are never happy because you are never satisfied with what you are focused on or else why would you be so focused on it. And why focus on anything anyway. In the big picture, you are a rat sniffing from flower to flower for no reason. Are you a victim of neurodigm?

XXVIII. Same-E
Hopinaskipina. Everything seems fine until all the sudden you have to break your healthy rthyum and engage in uncharacteristic behavior. Consequences include loss of productivity and increased stress factor for coworshippers. Signs of disease-specific denial: "had to let my hair down," "just needed to get away," "fuck you; get out of my face." Ask your shiv priest about your doctor. Then, stop your hopinaskipina.

CC. Rock o' Mthyuh
Blight. Something in the air. You're not the only one who's being affected. But not everyone has the nut to do something about it. You stay right in the head because you owe it to your family, for the safety of whom you are like a lioness. You take your Pro-Labique Pharmashiv whenever and wherever you need it: for protection, for peace of mind. You are not a sick one trying to get well; you are a potentially deadly protector of children. Keep taking Pro-Labique. Don't let them down ever again. If you do, do you really deserve to live?

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

9. Time is a Liar

"AAA had to come and get you where? Was it...? Well then why were you bleeding?" Sylvia was standing in a robe in her kitchen. A stunted grapefruit dropped from the dying tree behind her on the other side of a sliding glass door. "If you'd like, I could... I just have to get dressed and I'll... OK. I'm glad you're fine then. Call when you get in."

She stared back into the kitchen from the living room couch then for a while. Her day had been intended to begin on that cool linoleum floor. With coffee. Maybe sliding open that door to let the cat out. The bright overhead light was still on in there. But she wasn't there. She'd picked up the telephone and listened into it and now she was out of commission. Her day had changed. Or, she guessed, it was never her day to begin with. The day itself seemed to be oblivious, the same slow spin of the planet. The same constant tumult forward or backward, depending on which way you faced. She could almost see herself gliding between the stove and the fridge. Probably what she'd be doing right then. Yawning into the back of her hand. Stooping with a tiny dish of egg yolk for Kitty. Then letting him out the back.

The living room was dark and intended for guests. It really didn't care how or how often it was used. It was set for a strobe of activity, and the blank spots didn't count. This felt like an unexpected layover in a haunted ballroom. The two hours you spend in a matinee, getting surprised every time you walk out and have to squint and figure out who you were again. Tom was the unexpected one. He could be counted on that way. He was a professional variable. In fact, he'd been next to her right there, a few times, on that couch. Realistically, the only reason he still wasn't there is that he got up and walked away. Maybe he was just going to the bathroom or out for a smoke. But he just never happened to ever think to sit down just there ever again. Or at least for a long time now. But let's not blame time, thought Sylvia, after another shot of Teacher's Highland Cream. Time is oblivious. It's Tom's fault.

Kitty sat at Sylvia's feet, cleaning egg from his whiskers.