Patient News from the Lower Mid-Section.

 

Since the patient we've been caring for, despite our having been warned, has been observed switching items between members' wraps that are stored during the day in the cubbies next to her room, it was only fair to take matters into our own hands and put a stop to other things as well. Her hair is coming in very nicely now but try as we may it might never stand us in good stead to embark on a new project without the cooperation of her caretaker. This gentleman, even when seated, appears to try to treat one and all like just so many dime-a-dozen replacement parts in the human zoo that passes for our particular part of the coveted youth demographic.

When she uttered her first words in the hallway which borders the corridor everyone heaved a sigh of release. The rumor of her refusal to begin shouting was just that, a rumor. What wasn't a rumor was the way she tenderly played with a rare type of raisin which was spotted just out of sight in the boiler room where people routinely made calls to outlying areas under cover of darkness. Their faces would scream even as their mouths remained firmly shut.

In light of that it has to be said that even one suspicious noise would never be enough to rouse the crew down at Security. The 'blond behemoth' who called the shots down there thought he had a way with the ladies. But they just laughed in his immobile face, especially when he wore his Pleistocene T-shirt. It just gave them the creeps. Now they want to form some type of committee or club or something. It seems like all the young people are doing stuff like that these days.

When tendrils of acrid white smoke were observed emanating from under her special custom-made mattress our long-suffering Pekinese mascot turned several shades of magenta and bolted into the Dave room and needed to be intubated with a raspberry blond stewardess's lipstick canister. It's all we had left, given all the wartime tragisties. He made a full recovery in a matter of seconds.

Now the patient held all the cards. She ruled the roost. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. My partner Jenny Randall kept her hand poised over the main power switch. Her little brother, Joe Sr., started twitching like the prick that he is. My landlord's lost wallet was found in the men's room of the Civil War Museum in Cleveland, Utah. All in all I think anyone would have to agree that it was a productive afternoon.

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This is not a joke.

An unretouched photograph of a true-life event.

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On the matter of 'the Wading Car'.

 

Of the three times I was escorted into the wading car at the foot of the vestibule's trestle, I seem to remember the second most clearly. My rare ankle condition was healing nicely and therefore I thought nothing of donning a Cooper Star in the center of the forehead to inhibit my baser pastimes. The tiniest card, which I carried in lieu of a trick, always emitting its characteristic hum, sat nestled in my bum as if all sore points were now a polished filigree of Church intrigue. But this was of no moment since, in my effort to imbibe a dollop of daily B-stock, I had forgotten my secret name for a silent 'pretend' horse who'd guarded my portion of the sacrifice that would soon enable my entry into an occulted hallway, unknown by those whose pressure could never suffer the installation of the last tri-plected lens in out possession.   

The fluid on the floor of the wading car was warm to the touch, sweet to the taste but with each rasp of our driver's sleeve, was seen to admit to the possibility of foreshortened lauffeurs in shapes that our memories could scarcely well conjoin. I remember a piece of toast balanced on a headrest, swaying to and fro, almost appearing to launch a mite-sized crumb into the gap where I held a semi-permanent grulch. This was my own tiny secret, the relic of which our bond was plain for even the most sullen of the guards to apprehend. Each seemed to move an ochre-dyed finger to create a striped trail in the movable atmosphink. But I knew it could not last. I could tell you now that the breathing was solid, but that would leak my game and risk breaking the flask that is dearly held, when not at all.

So as the rattletrap proceeds, and our falsely jolly bonhomie peters into a loam of silent buggery, I'm reminded of costs incurred and denied, defied and deflated, fellated and enthralled. Therefore to inscape the common flaw, while comforting a maddened willow, will amount to a hope given to foreswear any evening's Chapel stick. It's a bridge and there's talk around that you may have bought it. I could give you a hand but that would mean the end of civilization as we once knew it. If there is any bragging encountered while we approach a manageable mound, it won't be the first time. In fact, at a time like this we need every human critter to scatter the lines to escape a bane. Willfulness broaches our infighting. Willingness, however, empowers the victorms to shellac a miniature table and sue for peas. I'm happy if you still can't tell the diffadence. And in case you still haven't guessed, now your name is Wally.

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Current Conditions Seem Likely.

It was as if I could remember leaving a small piece of artificial foam--it had been a sort of keepsake--just inside our neighbor's garage door, but all I was really doing was rehearsing an alibi I needed to tell with a straight face when my name came up in discussions of the latest societal contretemps. My place in the village seemed somehow even more precarious than it had in the previous two years of wilting faces on all those who would contribute even a petty farling for recovery at the speed of wind. My otherwise cheerful mien was cratered with a concern for a sly business person whose petals formed the backbone of a likely exercise in holding forth to a silent tradition of piece through strength. I would tell all the people who asked about my place in things that none was to be had even with a mildly abortive effort.

A church that I'd been asked about on more than one occasion was now a ghost of its former shell. The cannery in the next town over never had it so good but you couldn't tell that by looking. No. You had to approach in disposable slippers and then take a knee if you thought someone was about to make a sound. Only then could you be sure that your task was to be seen as anything other than a rank substitution. Now you could afford to take an idle moment to arrange your accessories more appropriately. If anyone thought they could tell you where to apply for insurance against  persistent crackage, they would risk only moderately off-color comments. To which all you had to reply was, 'Yeah..... could be...'

When I decided to drive my car without the normally required anti-bacterial gloves, that was a turning point. It seemed that one of the images I recalled defacing was of an orphaned pony that went on to win a coveted position in the nascent animal autocracy. This did not earn me any points when it came to holding my own in the speed dating hierarchy. Which is why I never showed much interest archery, knitting or metallurgy. Now that we're home again, the bastion of internal displacement has scorned a pleasant icon of derision. And this is why I still claim to love the sounds you make while eating your favorite snack. Oh, and one more thing, have they ever thought about doing anything with your hair?

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Pacifism is not the answer.

 

Now that the accused passivists who form what's known as the rump of the Surviving Branch (think genealogy here, kids) have gathered together bits of colored paper to increase the merriment quotient in our abandoned hotel, those of us who remained behind for our own good can see that parts of our faces start to swell (around the burn marks, as you might guess) and our voices, when we're inclined to try to talk at all, assume a fellacious quality. If, when I turn to the right to get at a rare seashell caught between the tumbrels of reticulated isotopes which were imported from Iberia to improve our eyesight in darkness, I'm accosted by a silent witness to bankable atrocities, my first instinct is to trounce a lonely soldier in a multi-layered  storybook shanty and delay his entry into a bygone clinical trial which comes as a surprise to a representative of the Introducer's Association.

They have bargained by our side for multiple durational periods and had every reason to flee the premises even after their specimens were lost in the War. There are tracts of vellum which prove the opposite but a well known anti-ageism activist has absconded with them and they won't play ball. This leaves us no choice but to evaluate our functions with a cold, hard staring contest into the vacuum of spacious accommodations for leisure-time activities everywhere. And it won't get any easier after this. For the simple reason that we serve meals while memorizing sports trivia and engage in sexual relations while violating Federal parole statutes. If it makes anyone feel better, we could offer them a chance to grow more apologetic while they age with grace. Or would that be too much to pretend to ask?

We ask because it never fails to occur to those of us entrusted with secreting a prime ingredient in our hoop-skirts that the metaphorical dome under which we labor during prime viewing hours is liable to collapse the articulated shards in a shamble of bromads. This would not be the result which those of us on the inside have lobbied for in all the years since I sold a compromised witness into a nest of vainglorious mickterflarbs. And it doesn't get any sweeter than that. You can tell by the way they switch the label in nugatory skylights. All the directions are absorbed and a lone drop of digestive bile coats the Slanting Desk with the sheen of intra-uterine masturbation. Now we will adjust our handkerchiefs for the road ahead and scare the bejesus out of the intransigent revulsionists who scope our bride. It'll serve them right. And then we'll sit down for a tasty supper. And then we'll die.

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