Party People. Flash.

Hunger is a raw feeling. Whether it's hunger for sleep or food. People are obsessed with the pain, but, pain is only the surface. When comes that deeper sensation, pain is puny and shrinking away and then it's nothing. In its place is the devil.

Walking through this desert, I can't tell you on the calendar where I am. I can't tell you for how many days and nights. The number times the sun has slid across the sky, and the bowling moon. The clouds and stars both have bared witness to my walking. Forever.

Several times when the sun and moon are there there with me in the waste, I have contemplated eating sand. My stomach has stopped. My piss is gone. The sun and moon both say, "yes, you should."

The stars shout, "do it."

Sharp wind. I walk and my lips are chapped. I crest a dune. I descend. So many times.

When my neck turns, I hear the crackling of something brittle. All I see is the sand and the heat dancing with the air. The sound was my neck's skin falling away, now there is only flesh and muscle. Across my forehead is another small tear the wind fingers open. The wind grips a flap and pulls, rips and there it is my skin carried away and falling away behind me.

Sharper wind, my head lowers to shield my eyes and my skull is a white cap. A gust finds the groove of my skeleton and rides down my spine, a skin cape is sent off. The wider view of my back shows muscle ropes untying. Falling off in wires.

I look up for a moment and it stings, I raise my hand, I close my eyes. The last thing I saw was the skin around fingers fraying, shredding off. Sand has made it into my bones and every movement there is the grind of grit against gristle.

Like it has been unzipped, the skin along my arm parts in half. Then the stuff it held underneath is loosed. There is no feeling anymore, anywhere.

You can see my radius bone, ulna. The humerus, the long bone, my shoulder blade, both shoulder blades like rough plates. My arms are still raised and my hands are outstretched to hold the wind back but the wind gets through, through the spaces between my bones, into my bones, killing the marrow.

Small bit by small bit those bones in my wrist fly off and my hands go limp. I am blasted back and my legs stumble to keep balance while the whole of my front is ripped away and there is the rib cage, the heart beating behind it, the heart that tears away and joins everything else in the wind, still beating and tumbling into the bright void. I fall to the sand. The last thing I hear is the wind whistling through my bones.

Party People!!!!!!!

Quick premise of the flash story - it's done on the fly. No editing, no real preparation, just putting the skills on the spot and seeing if they can kick ass. My brain got steel toed boots. They better. . .

The Paper and the Ditch

He clenches his fist and he walks from the table to the kitchen window. Back to the table. Morning is cold and the steam from his tea cup is a long tendril. Looks like if he reaches for it he'll grab silk. Instead, he puts his hands down on the table, looks down at nothing.

The morning paper says they found the body in the ditch several miles from home. If he had a time machine, he would have stopped himself from saying anything at all. If he had a hand ax and a name, or even a picture of how that man looks like, he wouldn't be here in the kitchen walking back to the window, turning on the water without knowing why he was doing it. Maybe it would drown his crying. He falls to one knee.

Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
--William Congreve, The Mourning Bride

Party People,

Dig. She pulled herself through that strange grey artificial layer they paved here. It was easy and quick, she just needed to apply pressure, then a low crack like bones. Her fingers were digging passed, flexing and rendering these fragments of asphalt in a slow shattering. The cool cool earth was next and nothing else to get in the way.



She whispered to the earth. It has been too long. The earth whispered back. Yes. The earth had spun around in the darkness, waiting and waiting. Holding on to her voice and and to the moments that transpired ages ago between them. Her fingers all over him so amazingly the same as when last they were together. Dig.

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This is what happened to this man earth and lady tree.

They awoke holding one another. This was their first memory. And for the longest time they stayed this way, clinging and listening to the other breathe. Earth's belly inflated and burred, deflated and the lady tree could feel his heart beat. when she breathed, her branches shivered and some leaves sprouted and some fell. They tickled. The loam was soft and always gentle. The leaves always caressed and brushed at his body as they swayed in the wind.

One day, the lady tree told him to watch, as she stretched over his body and crawled a for a few.



She stood, reaching up to the sun stretching a little more. Then she danced. Her slender legs carried her off scissoring. The roots trailing like ribbons. When she leaped into the air, the wind caught under her and lifted her even higher as her leaves all at her back a waving flag. She landed and bent over. She spun. Her head whipped around and her arms outstretched and she took on the shape of a star.

I'm watching, the man earth said. My eyes are open.

I know, she said.

There was another time she went to sleep lullibied by the small snores his chest made. Then she was awoken by explosions. In the shock she stood straight up and she could hear him laughing. When she turned, he was quaking offering up the brightest red fireworks. He boomed. He cracked open and revealed the glowing orange core of him.

This is for you.

Then the booming was done and an awful smoke appeared overhead, thick. He was all black for the gift he gave her.

She shook her head.

Wait. Turn around.

She saw the ocean waters reaching higher than her. Then they slapping down and behind the waves spinning torrents shot down from the sky. And above were the darkest clouds she ever saw. Suddenly a loud snap and the brightest of lights. She felt full of heat and energy and she couldn't stop breathing and things moved so much faster - her eyes her movements her thoughts she saw all the storms of this man earth all the animals that swam around the torrents all that swam in the air and it was all beautiful.

Thank you.



Your welcome.

This went on for some time until time dissolved. Just days and nights. Breathing. And all throughout their dancing and quaking they loved one another.

Then smoke out of the distance a grey tendril ever rising and curling. The earth saw this. He didn't know what was happening, it wasn't him who made it.

The winds soon reported a new storm, something not caused by the air or the waters or his sister moon. The winds called it peapul. It wasn't long before earth learned their language. People. He learned more. He learned that in all their storming, they were killing things and one another. They were damming up the waters and giving things names.

You have to go.

What?

You have to leave me.

Why? I don't want to leave you.

You have to go because they take everything and claim it as their own. They set things down to pinions and kill things and themselves. They will claim you and kill you. You must go.

Where do I go?

The earth looked back at the smoke getting closer. These People are stupid and unaware of a lot of things. Disguise yourself as one of them. I will teach you how.

Then this man earth did as he said he would, and sadly as he knew soon enough they were going to part. He was teaching her how to look like them and act like them. As he did, he cried and rivers veined from his cheeks the clearest and most sparkling blue.

He taught her to forget him.

I will do everything you tell me to but I won't forget you.

He was quiet.

I will come back to you.

He was quiet.

I will come back.

Okay, he said, closing his eyes. He would die hoping she would come back.

For all that the People did to him, this hope was the only prison that made him feel confined and unable to move, the only torture that brought pain. And for the longest time he hoped and waited. Hoped and waited.

-----------------------------------------

Now. Digging.

I will never let you go again, she said.

I know.

I am stronger now. There's no need for me to run or hide. There's no more need for you to yield to anyone again. Except to me, she said.

I know. I know. He was happy again.

She was almost there. She dug.

with the whole of the citizenry looking up to see if he gestures a hand or slips an off-way look that may reveal some telltale sign of some hidden agenda that exists behind his monstrous character or the awful poetry that stirs them to believe in their own spirit as if the truth of the worlds were incubated there, dormant, and only needing to be roused by him.
-- Narrator, How Expectations Are The Same As Homicide

Party People,



The lights are off.

Looking out the window so high up, the mayor stands hands in pocket. From when he first took office to now, the view never ceases to amaze him. What amazes him more is the inescapable urge to slide open that window, let the cold air of this elevation moaning and rushing like ghosts in. Step out onto the ledge. Jump.

This is not a suicidal thought. He is just reminded constantly of why he ran for mayor and with pride he knows he has never swayed from pursuing the change the city needed. He loves this city. This is not a bad thing. The people appreciate this fact about him. Such beautiful people. Such a beautiful office. Such a beautiful view. he steps closer to the window.

Nothing strange. He only wonders about how it would feel if he lept, spread arms and legs like a star, the air coming up wrapping around him and then hovering above as he kept falling, his tie vertical and shivering. Falling with the city lights so small below but expanding as he got closer and closer. All the people down there milling, walking or in their cars or on their bikes, every voice and laugh rising from the streets, the squeal of tires and slamming of doors, all sound sharpening as he fell faster and faster. How wonderful it must feel to be speeding toward this and then becoming one with it all.

The phone rings. He turns away from the window for a moment. In the dark, the red light that flashes on the phone looks like a wild beacon of some distant boat. He's not here. The phone clicks and the answering machine kicks in. He turns back to the window. He's down there with them.

There is a boy and a girl who are meeting right at this moment in a dark corner of some park. Their parents don't know about it. They dodge the orange circles the street lamps make on the sidewalks and each step is light. In the midst of this tryst, they revel in the secrecy of it all and savor it in the warmth of their holding hands and the giggling and at the end of every kiss where there is tingling and sparkling on their lips. It is a school night. That makes it that much more awesome.

Somewhere else, a group of women sit somewhat cramped on a couch, as one of their own stands in front of them pantomiming as they try to guess what she is. It's silly. Nerdy. But it's fun because they're all together and no one talks about how one among them just revealed she has breast cancer earlier today. They are all on the verge of laughing so hard there is no sound, or breaking down and crying because this is what they all need and they love each other so much unable to think of a world without their friends.

An old homeless man, smelling rotten, sitting against a concrete wall with his head down facing his lap. The ache is there in his neck and everywhere else, he knows, but he doesn't feel it. He keeps his head down when he hears the jingle of coins tossed into his cup. He fights within himself whether the change is going to be part of the drug he wants to pump in his body or to actually buy food this time. People don't know what he's going through. They think they do. They all think they do. Fuck them.

Someone else out there is having hot sweaty sex.

An old man stands alone in the bathroom of his apartment. He wears a tuxedo and he is fixing the bow tie, elbows out, eyes squint reckoning the dimples in the cloth. Tomorrow is his daughter's wedding and he is thinking about her. How as a child she used to run through the house trailing mud on the carpet, holding up a stick. That stick was her magic wand she ruled the world with. Her mom yelled at all that mud. When she fell and struck her forehead on the corner of the table, she cried 'Dad'. Now when she gets hurt, it will be another she calls to. That's okay. This has been a good life.

A baby being born. To the expecting father, the room is blaring white and the crowning head looks too gruesome and he feels sick, telling himself he is about to faint. The mother giving birth is yelling at him. She is yelling not to faint. She is commanding him not to look away. Through all this, there are doctors with their face masks on and their foreheads sweating, a nurse is saying comfortable words to her. She expected this to happen, the delivering mother. And this is going to be a perfect birth. Part of this perfect birth is her husband witnessing the whole damned thing. Then he will know fully what she goes through. She yells at him to watch. He will always know, and he will carry himself accordingly.

Someone is asleep. In the real world she is a she, 'A' cup breasts and thinly shaved vagina, but in the dream world she is a he, paunch belly and penis and wild pubic hair, and when she wakes up she doesn't understand what it means. She's been reading her horoscope lately and going to the library to read books about being gay. It's just so hard, she thinks. Being gay. They were told they can marry and now are being told they can't. People waffling on the law more than people waffling on their sexual orientation. It's a crazy mixed up world. Yes it is.

Somewhere in the darkness there are other people, people with their faces covered, dark hoods on and bottles of spray cans in their hands. Two of them. They slink under the bridge waiting for the squad car to pass over. They have planned this one moment for a few days now. One night. They will strike so many walls with their tags and the whole city will know their names in just a few more hours. Their hearts rattle in their chest just like the bits in the cans when you shake them. They breath. They exhale paint.

A family. Two boys, a mother, a father and a grandmother. They sit around the dining table in their house. They have reached the part of dinner where everything is quiet. Conversation has died. But in that wordless, hanging moment, one of the boys looks up at the rest of his family, faces to the plates concentrating on the meatloaf. He notes everything that must be happening just outside their house. The whole city is heaving. After he is deployed, they will never have this moment again where they are doing something simple together. Where nothing is too urgent or painful. The world will move on and things will change. He clings to how much he loves them all right now despite what fights have been and will be, what stupid things they have done and said and will do and say. To them, it is just a quiet awkward moment. They won't ever know how hard the sound of a fork scraping against a plate can hit when it carries a life on it.

The mayor of this fine city thinks, who wouldn't want to dive into all of this?

---------------------------------

He looks now toward downtown. The tree looks like a massive shadowy hand poised to snatch up the surrounding lights. It has cleared a few blocks, rendered a few buildings unsafe. Traffic horrendous. Calls and letters and more calls and people yelling and other people scratching their heads. This is a problem. No matter how all those beautiful tree hugging fanatics might love the damned thing--they say it's a symbol of nature's unyielding beauty and order--it's a big pain in the ass and the cause of many migraines these past few days.

It has grown faster than anyone had expected, now 20 stories tall. And someone in the recent city council meeting put forth the scary prospect that the thing's roots will undo the foundation and by its very weight sink this whole city into the ocean and no one knows what to do. It's something he doesn't have an answer for. He hopes that someone down there does. But that's just a dream.

All he has right now is love. Would they take that? If he stepped out there on that ledge and spread his arms out and offered to embrace them and hug them and tell them it was going to be alright? Could something like that make everything better?

Let me devour what's inside you.
-- 'Please Please Please,' Head Automatica

Party People,

A group of 5 men in yellow hardhats stood around. Their bellies distended and eyes squinted in enjoyment and their thick necks and faces were red with mirth. They laughed. Another man in a hard hat swung the axe at the tree and the shaft bit back and hurt his hands as the blade slammed against the tree trunk and just ricocheted back with only a loud pop but without any cut to the bark.

"Guddam," the man said. He dropped the axe handle and shook out his hands.

The tree, in the middle of the road, had grown as tall as a two story building. Its canopy reached across both sides of the street to cover the sidewalk and this city block was left in shade.



They had blocked this portion of the street and detoured traffic to go around. The people of this city weren't happy.

----------------------------------------

Going Green A Nuisance?

Today, city workers are finding a nuisance in form of a large tree, which had mysteriously sprang up in the middle of one of the city's main thorough ways. Currently, no one knows how the tree got there, but they want it out of there, now.

Yeah, as you see, it stands there right in the middle of Main like a stubborn bastard, ooop. Can I say bastard on TV?

That's Main Street. Officials say that all attempts to cut the tree down have been unsuccessful. From electric saws to swinging a plain hand axe at the thing. It just won't come down. They've now decided to use a bulldozer. This, however, will mean that portion of Main Street will be closed while they uproot the tree, and then repair the asphalt.

All who take Main to work or those heading into Downtown this weekend for a bit of shopping, you might want to take the backstreets and prepare for some light traffic.

Just look at that thing. Massive. That's one stubborn you-know-what, isn't it? What? I'm not going to say it. You heard the man. Hehehe.

Next we have live feed from the City Zoo where Brian Fantana has an update on pregnancy of Ling the Panda, Brian. . .



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Bulldozers are cool. I've never seen one before. It sounds like a tank coming in. A number of us had stopped to see them trying to take down the tree. Just heard about it this morning. Apparently it was such a big thing. A tree grown out of Main Street.

Dave and I somehow got to the front of the crowd that had gathered to murmur on the sidewalk. Such a big production. The had yellow caution tape up and squad cars in the background with their red and blue's flashing. Officers stood here and there watching things. A crew of fat workers in hardhats loafing around shooting the shit.

Dave said, "a heavy saw, you know the one they use on those big redwoods in the forests, blades look like plates. They went at it with a heavy saw and the thing just broke down. The blade bent and sparks and all that. Smoke. And on the tree not even a scratch."

"You really believe that? This is a tree we're talking about here."

"I don't know."

"How'd the tree even get here? Isn't there someone supposed to watch for things like this. Our tax money goes somewhere, right?"

Someone down the way began yelling. A woman. "Hey. We understand that the road needs to be clear. But, you better replant it somewhere. Keep this thing alive. They keep sick prisoners on death row alive. You can keep the tree alive and safe. Keep the tree safe. Keep the tree safe." A few people there began chanting with her.

Environmental nuts. I understood then why there were so many officers there. The police stared out at the crowd with taciturn eyes. I looked trying to see the woman but there were so many people. All I saw was a picket sign bobbing above the heads, simply said SAVE THE TREES PLEASE. Soon everyone started pushing up behind me when the bulldozer sounded, rumbling some few blocks away. I was excited. Bulldozer.



All heads turned toward the sound and quiet set in among the onlookers. Dave and I were quiet too. I thought how much of a life I didn't have. Saturday afternoon, standing here just to see a tree taken down. Somewhere someone was zip lining over a hot jungle in a semi-dangerous harness prepared by third-world inhabitants. Somewhere else someone else was in the middle of great sex. How could I get my thrills just from a tree?

Under the cover of the bulldozer's grumble, getting louder as it got closer, there was suddenly another sound just beneath my feet. Like rope tightening. I glanced down and saw the sidewalk and the shoes of those standing on either side of me. The bulldozer got louder and louder, grumbling and grumbling, it came in sight and the woman yelled again.

"Take it down responsibly. Outrage if you destroy that tree."

"Shut up," someone else said.

"You shut up."

"I hope it goes down fast."

"Heartless biggot. Keep the tree safe. Keep the tree safe."

What was that sound? I looked back down and that tightening sound underfoot continued. I saw nothing. Something under the sidewalk. I looked at the tree. Then at the bulldozer which was rolling up and its claw lifting like a warrior's hand telling its opponent to bring it on.

"Did you hear that?"

"What?" Dave said.

That tightening sound wouldn't stop. And the bulldozer was coming.

----------------------------

She secretly wanted to see destruction. Whether it was the uprooting of the tree and the rubble of the asphalt and dirt clinging to the massive roots which looked like rugged tentacles or somehow the bulldozer in meeting the indestructible stubborn tree smashing against the immovable trunk and breaking down, the claw bending back, the cage with the operator inside crushing against the bark and the operator bursting like a squeezed balloon full of blood, and smoke puffing out of the engine before it all just crumbles. Preferably she wanted to see that, where the bulldozer breaks down. There was more destruction in that. But none of it happened. The claw just pushed up against the wood. The engine of the bulldozer revved hard. The crowd around her cooed a little. Then the front wheels of the bulldozer lifted off the ground, came back to the ground, lifted, then came back down again. Then they stopped. All the workers stood around scratching their heads. A police officer went to talk to the foreman. All of a sudden a loud chatter and hissing of walkie talkies.

She was really, really disappointed.

-------------------------

"Indestructible."

"Really."

"Really."

"Nothing can take that thing down."

"I wonder what they're going to do now."

"Should take explosives to the thing."

"Ooo. Yeah. Like satchel charges. All around the base."

"Booom."

"Yeah."

"Must have some strong roots."

"Must have."

"Shit."

"Shit."

----------------------------------

It digs its claws into the earth. The loam feels good against its skin. Those little things that scurry about its stomach tickle and make it laugh inside. But it can feel their anger too. Something that they can't control. Soon it will change, however. Soon they will change. Or die.

All the ugly people be quiet!
--Will Smith the Fresh Prince on a Def Jam Tour, (circa 1980's)

Party People,



This night in the middle of a Metropolis busy because yellow headlights and red taillights shoot between the buildings, like they were the city's life-blood and the streets the veins and arteries, in the middle of a street busy because you are there and see the cars rushing by and hear the the susurrus of tires sliding on road under all the clattering voices and clanking of struck sewer gratings and are shouldered by unnoticing people rushing just as frenzied and anxious, someone steps off from the sidewalk.

Just a figure wearing a dark sweatshirt, hood over the head, and sweat pants, you can't tell if he is a he or she is a she. This person steps onto the street and a car approaches. The anonymous is made a shadow in between the headlights. The car swerves to avoid a hit. Long after the car passes its horn lingers and the sound slowly fades into the din of everything else. The figure keeps moving across, more cars passing honk.

This one, in dark fatigue, stands there in the middle of the street and is out of view for only a moment. A woman with a strange feathered hat has stepped in the way. It takes just that split second. When the woman takes her next step and the view is clear again, this person in the middle of the street is gone. Not on the other side. No where.

It could have been a daydream. You watch a lot of TV and you read enough books. You have good imagination. Later that night when you're home in bed laying awake for a moment you go over the things you have to do tomorrow. You hear your lover breath harder as she begins to dream next to you. Kiss her goodnight on the cheek. You close your eyes. The next day that small little moment transpired last evening will not even be a memory.

----------------------

The kid liked to bike to school in the morning because there were not too many people around. He biked to where things were a cacophony just hours ago. Now, just a handful of sleepy people in suites, overcoats and work dresses walking with attache cases swinging or purses clutched close to the ribs to get their morning coffee.

The kid barely slowed to see if there was oncoming traffic and rode on. He stood with his hands on the handles, more power for his pedalling. Eyes squint because of the cold, warm tears forming at the corners, his vision blurred a little. About the middle of the road his bike suddenly stopped moving and he was flipped tossed from the momentum and wound up on his back on the asphalt. Good thing he wore a helmet.

He lay there for a moment. The sky was grey and the air cooled his eyes. Someone on the sidewalk said something in surprise. But no one yet calling out to check if he was alright. No one come up to help him. Just the sky and the city towers reaching up in his periphery.

"What the hell."

When the kid stood, he pressed up from the ground and looked to see what his bike had caught on. A few feet behind him, his bike lay on the street and a small plant was there sprung from an open crack. Just a foot tall, it looked like the beginning of a tree.



"What the hell."

How would something like that spring from the ground, here, in the middle asphalt in the middle of a wide road, he didn't know. Someone should do something about it. He kicked at the plant and it didn't move, it's hard green stock stood strong. The leaf attached to the tiny point at the top just shivered as a slight breeze swept through the street. Real green.

The kid stood his bike up and wheeled it to the other side of the street before he mounted it again and went on his way to school. Just a small shock in the morning. No big deal.