Beer and Buzz -- Flash Fiction

 

                                                                Beer and Buzz

 

Ernie followed Megan to the end of the hall.  Distracted by friends shouting at her and constantly talking on her cellphone, she couldn’t see him or hear him. He couldn’t touch her like a painting in a museum. If he did, he’d end up in detention—and be lost forever. 

Megan’s long blonde hair reminded Ernie of fields of wheat, and her eyes showed clarity of the mind and body.  Unlike the way they portrayed the “it” girl in the movie as a vapid enemy, she upheld the qualities of character and scholarship.

This was not true of Ernie.  He went to special ed classes, always darting in there so that the other kids wouldn’t notice him much.  Even the kids that did, these baby adults chose to keep their minds as silent as his tongue when they saw him.   

“Hey, Ernie,” a boy named Matt said as he slid into his chair, fat squished and squeezing in the too little chair.  “You should see this drawing.”

“Woe, she has tits and everything…” Both boys stared at the picture of the girl with her legs spread, lightning bolts all around her, an obvious goddess. She looked like Matilda from home economics. 

Rusty threw his bag toward the teacher’s desk and sat down backwards.

“Is this considered child pornography?” Rusty laughed.

“Aw, we’re just curious, teenage boys in the retard class.  It’s not like we have our lives ahead of us,” Matt said.

“So you’re going to look at child pornography as an okay thing?” Rusty asked. 

“It’s age appropriate. After all, we have to know the birds and the bees. People have painted and drawn naked women forever. I’m making art,” Matt said.

“Oh, look at us, we have taste,” Ernie said.

“All I have is beer with me. Mrs. Moth will be here soon, and we’ll color the numbers, pretending like we’re receiving an education,” Matt said.

“Dad said we’re going to get our asses kicked in life. So we should shape up,” Ernie said. 

“I think I’ll take the SSI and play video games all day. I don’t want to be part of the system.” Rusty scratched an old, grey mole

 “Futures are the reflections in the mirror,” Matt said.

“Rusty, what are you going to grow up to be?  After all, shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you’ll land amongst the stars,” Matt said.

“A club bouncer.” 

Rusty looked the part, Ernie thought, with his soaring heights. He was handsome, too, a senior who would get a certificate saying he participated in school.  And that doesn’t matter when you’re six foot, five inches, and muscular. 

Mrs. Moth came in and put her purse under her seat.  She had short black hair and blue eyes that shined like light.  A porky woman, she ate her fried chicken and drooled.

Ernie thought of drawing her once, kind of a freak thing.

Amber, the final member of the gang, came in last.

Amber never talked to anyone. As a child, Ernie recalled, they diagnosed her as mentally retarded.  No one knew why she held her tongue, a very pretty girl.  Lost.  She surveyed the tiny classroom and its only window in the back, getting spit on from the rain.

“Now that everyone is here, please take out your packet work. We will work on it until lunchtime.”

The group passed around the bucket of crayons and pencils.  In the individualized packet, they pulled out their lessons, all that they could, and quickly scribbled so that they could go back to talking.  Mrs. Moth didn’t care.  Ernie figured she knew where we would be in five years and what we would do with our promising lives. 

Ernie really wanted the beer when it came to lunch hour.  Rusty, Matt, and he walked to the park in back of the school and passed the fizzing gold around, eating their sandwiches and fruit.

“Do you think atoms are useful?” Rusty asked Ernie.  Apparently, the soon to be thug, watched a program on TV about atoms. 

“What is an atom?” Matt asked.

“What stuff is made of,” Rusty said.

“When my grandma was in the hospital, she said the entire universe is made out of sugar water created by elves,” Ernie said.

“It could be,” said Matt.

“Aren’t we deep today?” Rusty laughed.

“Well, we could color some more girls like they did in art books. Totally innocent,” Ernie said.

“Best tits win!” Matt said.

“Yup. We’re artists,” Ernie smiled as he set the beer down.

 

 

 

 

 

"Kiss"

  

Kiss

 

Ah, Stars, spies of the night,

A honey trap of dueling eyes

Lust for the crescent smile…

 

Ascend into the heavens.

“Not lost,” they say, “found,”

Holding mixed lips of words.

 

It’s just a kiss.

Lessons of Meaning (Working Title)

 

Lessons of Meaning

 

             I live in a different world than you. I know many people wouldn’t understand how this came to be, and you know, I don’t know either. Isn’t that funny of things that are different, what we do and know?

  I once picked up a turtle walking toward the shade.  My lesson tablet said that I should not interfere with the turtle because he was not mine, and as an animal in place, I would deny another being of prey his or her lunch or him of his muscle.

             Many lessons come onto my tablet as I roam about the day.  The learning circle only taxed us as so much. They fear that if they did more, we wouldn’t remember, or we would mix them up.  When scribbling letters became a chore, we would stop seeing the shapes of reality.  Abstraction littered the human mind. 

             In the old days, humans ran wild and would break bones over words.  They called their talents wars, all of them: the war of a dancer, the war on food, the war on war itself.  Their minds buzzed with activity.  After a time, some became clearer but couldn’t hold his ideas like they couldn’t handle the toxic drink they once called alcohol.

             So there it is, less is more.  The purer our thoughts were, the safer we were, the better our world became.  I’ve seen humans, the old type. They are on a reserve where they live in groups called tribes. We allow them to plot, to kill, to be back to the savage nature mother nature gave us, the viewpoint of nature and lessons that they had.

             They often tried survival of the fittest, a comparison of course.  In their eyes, blind as a rock, they tinted the philosophy with themselves.  The world lost consciousness for many years before humans, our kind of humans, but we developed lessons. We gave meaning to life and itself.

             The other humans hated our reason.  To them, the word “justice” meant to fight over words for some gain, often furtively. 

             My tablet lit up as I approached the learning circle.  No eyes judged me. They read their tablets as the circle leader meditated with the group, going to a higher consciousness to think.

             “What is late?” I sat down and folded my legs.  I thought for a moment. “Late” means after. It pertained to the end of an event.  I thought of relevance. Today, I am late and past time. The tablet read my mind.  Like the others, I closed my eyes and began to ascend past the waking world. 

             In front of me, I witnessed colors spread out into shapes, into advanced letters and numbers. I saw lessons, tasted them, and I felt the warmth of pure thought in my mind. 

             The teacher opened his eyes one me.  I saw the deep, dark brown, and I felt a heavenly flow of understanding.

             The other humans were unable to reach such a high state.  Love was tangled with lust.  I felt no lust for him, no yearning.  The desire to reproduce lay dormant within us.  Only the red moon could melt us together to create another life, to grow another soul and consciousness.

             The teacher began to drive away, but he urged me to follow.  I slowly let him hold my existence until we made it to the other humans. 

             I saw an arrow fly through the air in a fight. One of the paler men fell to the ground and screamed in agony at death.  To us, death was as natural as life, given to us so that our souls could create more with knowledge and evolution, not stay in a state that would poison experience and understanding.

             I saw the assailant smile as his brother bled to death.  I thought of the turtle and the meanings and lessons in this world. I could not save them from another’s lesson.  They refused the tablets and meaning.  More people came to the clearing and cried over the death.  They chased the guilty man and made him die of the same fate.  Arms held arms and tears fell to the ground.

             I watched the soul release and fly into a cloud. The instructor pulled me back some.

             I felt myself speeding to the moment. 

             My tablet flashed, “And what do you think his lessons in a cloud shall he learn? Do you remember yourself?”

             “He will learn that even as he flies high above the realm of creatures, and he can watch the world and see the nature of the planet but be unable to harm it,” I responded. 

             The teacher left me and entered another student’s journey.  I looked up to the clouds gliding, changing.  

            

            

Two New Poems! The first one is titled "soulless," and the second one is titled "Sin."

 

Soulless

 

You want to go to heaven?

Put your flame in another’s

Candle?

Lit twice and minds gone.

Wax falls like slow tears,

As the woman leaves.

Time licking love lost,

Even she will fall to dust.

Not a soul to save.

 

 

 Sin

 

Sin is not allowed in rocks.

Sin is not allowed in water.

Sin is not allowed in clouds.

 

Only a mind is allowed to sin.

Only a mind can be ignorant.

The Dice of Life

 

 The Dice of Life

 

The world carved you a villain.

It’s all reasonable in the eyes

That folks shall never see millions

Without being within time.

Things come, and you go dealing

With needles and juice alibis.

Now hanging from the ceiling

Your lips parted, forever to lie.

Hush

 

Hush

 

Night’s silent world

Moon’s face forbidden

Earth with Hell mated

Ghosts’ blind eyes lost

Succubus parts limbs

A shadow falls upon

Uninvited, missed

Stolen memories

Forget us to flee

The frozen kiss.