aaron_the fall of America_chapter_09

Chapter 9

I woke up again with a creature sucking on my head, possibly trying to remove my brain. Maybe it thought my brain was something I didn't need anymore. Or it didn't care.

I didn't kill it this time. To examine it, I took it over by the wall, where there appeared to be a vague luminance. At some angles, it looked formless. When it tried to move, it seemed to have ten feet, or stubs. When it wasn't trying to move, it didn't appear to have any appendages. The appendages pushed out like turtle heads poking out of a soft shell. The only feature on what seemed to be the head was a relatively large mouth that didn't look as though it opened to anywhere. The mouth had great sucking ability, like a leach that has found your leg in its lake. The shape of the little monster changed too often to have a distinct appearance. Everything has to look like something else for reference but this thing wouldn't co-operate for my symbolic satisfaction. Perhaps it is best described as a gooey, rubbery toy.

I squeezed it a little too hard and it let out a high pitched squeal which was as shocking as the scream of a rabbit. I dropped it and lost sight of it.

The wall plagues me. It appears to be more nothing than anything but in such a deficient way that it lacks distinction or temperature. A dimension distortion. What disturbs me the most about it is that it doesn't fit with a musky smell. When my survival defences are down, I start to believe that it is my wall, that I am somehow responsible for it. It doesn't belong in a world of solids.

I can remember my last day of work in Toronto before deciding to move. When I arrived at work, I was called to see John. He informed me that I was a fish out of water. My irreverence was not needed in the finely tuned regimental work place. I didn't have the opportunity to explain to him that the asinine assembly line was a tedious waste of time. There was no market for his revolutionary non-product. It was no more than a technical research tax right off, waste of space, resources and energy.

None of that was the point. The point was, I was fired. When I asked for a reason other than being a fish, he recited the evidence gathered against me. One count of waving at a supervisor. One count of throwing a ball of paper at a fellow tracer. Several accounts of limited seriousness regarding the suggestions I anonymously put in the suggestion box. There were signs of other subversive tendencies.

Part of me was ready to destroy the mad monkey that sat higher in the tree then I did. Another part of me figured out that the tree was dead. The green was only plastic. I made it clear to him that I was hostile enough that I might want to kill him before I jumped out of his tree to fall back on the ground.

But he was right. I had no reason to stay in his tree if I didn't want my nose up his ass. His private school regimental learning convinced him no good could come from a curious creature of chaos. He couldn't have me shaking in a dead, brittle tree.

I remember another job where a John fired me. It was a similar reason; he didn't like me. Just before I was fired I lost a rag and nearly a finger in a roller. The rag caused a slight warp in something very expensive.

He called me into his office a week after the incident to inform me of the damage. As an after thought he mentioned he was glad my hand was all right. He was dam glad that workman's compensation wasn't involved. They might have questioned the safety of his plant.

He put me in a bucket of solvent for three days before I informed him that I didn't enjoy what the fumes were doing to my throat and lungs. I didn't think it was good that the skin on my arms and hands was dying. "Well use rubber gloves," he said and waved me out of his office. The next day he called me into his office to let me know that I wasn't needed anymore. I deciphered that as being fired.

The only satisfaction I received out of the first John, the most recent one, the one with his bodyguard Nick, was that I was giving him a headache. He told me so. My disagreeing with the relevance of his case was making him a bit angry and worried. I was chewing at his branch and he knew that I knew he was a manipulated, paranoid asshole.

It wasn't a matter of being fired so much as the fabricated reasoning that bothered me. If they would have said I was not a sound part for their machine, I wouldn't have been so offended. If they would have just said that they feared I was about to explode, I might have seen their point. I might have left without sinking my teeth into his limb.

I want fresh water. I can't eat fungus any longer. If I have to dig my way out, I will. I'll dig with my bare hands. If that doesn't work, I'll insulate myself in dirt and crash through the wall.

I must do something. The stagnation is killing me. The unknown has become far more inviting than the security of the prison of a few assumed certainties.



read on. book_01 chapter_10



by Joanne B. Washington

© 2001 | the jose wombat project