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How A Man Made Himself Live Forever

There was a slight tremble in Maurice’s hand, but he pretended it didn’t exist.  He imagined his muscles like loose ropes which moored a ship to the docks.  He saw himself grabbing hold of the frayed, coarseness of them and pulling hard, stealing all the slack they had stolen as the ship drifted at the mercy of the tide, and he wrapped each one tighter and tighter around the steel protuberances of the wharf.  His muscles mimicked this, the taught-ness and the tension.  He knew that this utter focus was necessary, because this was something that could not be undone.  There was no means to erase or undo each stroke of his blade.  There was a finality in this, but it did not enter into his head.  Only the unfettered commitment to his work which slowly etched itself in front of him as he went.

As each cut bore itself deeper into the surface, flakes and bits of paint fell to the floor like confetti and  began to stick to his pants.  But this too went unnoticed.  Maurice was almost finished now.  He was almost at the end of all this.  He felt a sudden, unexpected sting on the flat part of his thumb and a small stream of blood began to drip across the groves in his palm and down his wrist, as if some disembodied force was guiding it without knowing it, like hands on an Ouija board.

As a single drop of his own blood struck the floor, mixing with the paint and flecks of cheap metal, Maurice finished his work.  He had transfered which had only been a semblance of thoughts, a mixture of things never quite settled on long enough to be considered thoughts.  They couldn’t have that name because they were only flickers of ideas, strapped together with the fleeting phantoms of past experiences.  But now he had made them concrete.  He folded up his tool, hiding the half-dull tool away for now.  Maurice didn’t linger, though.  The thing was done and before the blood that had spilled on the floor had made its way into the groves of the tiles, he was out the door and in his car and down the road.

He knew that his work would be there forever.  And if he ever questioned his own existence, doubted for a moment that he was really a relevant player in this world, he would not need to doubt himself.

Because, forever etched into the third bathroom stall in the Gas and Go off of Interstate 73, read the words:

Metallica rules.

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Mayor Gunbear Vows to Clean Up Tatooine’s Filthy Capital

MOS ESPA, Tatooine – It’s a dirty job, and now Gunbear’s gonna do it.

An aide loyal to Mayor Gunbear said Thursday that his office will take over two waste-collection companies that are responsible for picking up garbage in Mos Eisley and dumping it in the Sarlacc Pit. In Mos Eisley, residents have long complained about inadequate trash collection.

Gunbear himself has repeatedly weighed in on the issue, criticizing city authorities for failing to get rid of the heaps of refuse, bodies, and droid parts that line the capital’s gritty downtown streets. “RAAAAWWWWRRRRR! SARLACC!” Gunbear said on Thursday.

Merle Tosche, the owner of Tosche Station and a self-proclaimed power converter enthusiast, blamed the problem on “the failure of the capitalist system, in which private interests were put above public interests.”

Mayor Gunbear’s office is also considering hefty fines for businesses that produce excessive amounts of waste, Merle said.

The waste-management companies targeted for takeover, Hutts2Sarlacc and Boba Fetch — did not immediately respond to Gunbear’s announcement.

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Letters That Are Beeps And Also Boops

He tapped his fingers on the table, all five of them, quickly and rapidly like he was nervous. But this was not it. He was waiting for a girl, yes, and that makes even the bravest lose their wit. But it was, instead, because he was desperately trying to recall his name in morse code. His father had taught him when he was young and it had always come to him easily in the back of his mind when he didn’t mean to think of it.

Da – dit- dit

That’s how it started. He was sure of that much. He remembered it was rhythmic, that it sounded like a song. The start of a catchy tune. Or maybe it was more like a limerick. What was that called? That tempo to the words that made a limerick a limerick and not simply a story with really bad spacing. Did it have a word?

A fly and a flea in a flue

Were caught, so what could they do?

He felt he should know it, since he went to school for it. Like a mechanic should know that thing that connects the alternator to the engine. If that thing had a name. It had to have a name, right?

Dit- dit – dit – da – da – da – dit – dit – dit

That was something, but not his name. That was SOS. This was good to know, he assumed, in case he was ever on a sea-faring vessel that was sinking and had no radio. But what if they asked for a name and he couldn’t say? What if they thought it was just a prank call and he drowned somewhere out in the Pacific, his colleagues shaking their heads disapprovingly at him since he could not remember three simple letters that were also beeps and boops.

Said the fly “Let us flee!”

Then he recalled that the letter ‘e’ was simple. Just a single, quick dot. Like a stab from a rapier.

Dit!

Just a simple one. After that, the ‘b’ made sense. It was longer, heavier. There was more there, and it certainly began with a da. A long one. A dash.

Da! Dit! Dit! Dit!

Almost there now. The dit’s were all but done, packed together like cattle in the middle. There were more da’s in there, to frame out the dit’s.

“Let us fly,” said the flea.

A lady with one of those obnoxious pocket dogs jammed in her purse, it’s head darting its eyes across the room like it was just hatching for the first time from an expensive Prada egg, stared at him since he was now hitting the table with his fingers like it was a snare drum. He had it now.

Da! Dit!

That was it! That was the N. The whole thing came back and sat so solidly in his frontal lobe, he wondered how he had ever not remembered it in the first place.

Da! Dit-Dit-Dit-Dit! Da! Dit!

He sneered back at the dog lady. He had won. And it was then the girl he had promised to meet walked in. He barely knew her, but he knew enough to know that if he told her this, shared in this achievement, she wouldn’t care even a bit. So, before she caught site of him, he grabbed his backpack and made quickly for the back door. All the time, he tapped out his name on his leg, as if he was trying to imprint it there forever. Brand it on his leg so he would never forget.

So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

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The April Fools Joke is on Me!

I think I’m naturally obnoxious. I’ve worked on it over the years so I hope that’s less apparent now-a-days. But as a child, oh Lord! You can imagine how much a child with irresponsibly undiagnosed ADHD might love the idea of April Fools Day. Every year I would try to come up with the best way to “Get” someone. But every year my prank was more than lame.

The problem was that I was a “gifted” child. That label, for many children, meant a higher level of intelligence and the heightened ability to absorb learned information. Unfortunately for me, I was part of the small faction of children where “gifted” actually meant “intelligently retarded.” So my pranks were usually too elaborate or far-fetched for a child with my meager means. In the Fifth grade I finally succeeded in pranking the living daylights out of someone…much to my later dismay.

That someone was Jennifer. She was the girl I had had a crush on since the Third grade. I adored her. About a week before April 1st I noticed she was wearing a Mighty Ducks jersey so I asked her if she would like to go to a game with me and my family the following week. She said she would love to and would ask her parents if it was alright. Trap Set!

Now, I WAS going to a game with my family but I didn’t have an extra ticket. What was I thinking?! I suppose it’s similar to how a young boy might punch a girl or pull her hair because he likes her except this doesn’t end with a black eye, just emotional scarring and an eternal distrust of the opposite sex.

So I played it cool for a week. April Fools day passed and soon came the day of the game. She asked me about the plans for the evening and I immediately blurted out “April Fools! Hahahahah!” I pointed. She cried and ran away. I felt horrible. Way to go, Dumbass. It wasn’t even April 1st anymore!

Why would I think it would be funny to play a joke like that on an innocent girl that I thought the world of? I later found out from her friend, who bitched me out severely, that Jennifer had actually liked me back and that was really the reason she was so excited to go to the game. I had broken her heart as well as my own. Double Whammy! There was no going back from that. I don’t recall her speaking to me much after that and we went to school together for Two more years.

That situation was a milestone for me. I realized how irresponsibly I had acted without concern for the other person. From that day forward I tried to be more thoughtful with my interaction with others. I was still obnoxious, I know this, but I tried to keep my actions victimless.

I suck at April Foolsing.