Anthropomorphism

Lately, something has been happening on my daily commute to work. Occurring again today, I fumbled with my iPhone to take a less than professional shot while stopped at a red light. I began to smile thinking about a day back in 1999.

For a hand full of years I lived in a two room apartment, it could quite possibly be described as a shoe box studio apartment with barely two walls dividing the rectangular living space. One to separate the bedroom and the other to give the place a sense of, “Hey, if you put an obstruction here it won’t look like the refrigerator is right next to the living room TV!” I could actually  write an entire post, short story or even a novel based on that wonderful little abode…..perhaps I will, one day.

Coming up or down the three red bricked steps outside leading to my doorway, I would always have to watch my foot placement closely. There was always bound to be a frog or two hopping about. There were many nights; I lay in bed staring at a spinning ceiling where I wondered if I had been careful enough on the ascent home fearing I would see murderous results on the steps in the morning.

At the time I was working at a video store near the beach. The commute was about twenty minutes down to Third Street, door to door. One morning leaving my apartment, scanning the ground there was a sigh of relief, No corpses and I could walk freely, No frogs. I got into my red Geo Storm GSI and sped off towards the least time consuming route to work in 8 a.m. traffic. Ten minutes into the drive, in my peripheral vision spotted something moving about on my passenger side windshield wiper blade, a second later it leapt on to the center of the glass hanging on for dear life at my 50 mph pace. A baby frog! I had been so careful at home and now I was about to commit vehicular homicide to an innocent little victim. I slowed the car down to a speed that I thought would be safe for his sticky little fingers. “I can’t stop now! I’ll be late!” I thought. Managing not to lose the little tyke on the bridge over the Intarcoastal Waterway and keeping him safe in the slower traffic of the beach side community, I finally arrived to work.

“He won’t be safe on my car in this hot parking lot. I have an eight hour shift. It’s the middle of Summer,” I thought. I carefully picked him up from the windshield. He made no attempt to hop away from my reach. I felt like he knew I was looking out for him. Next to our building there was a long patch of grass no more than six feet wide but it stretched the length of the building. He could survive there. Possibly make friends and if he was careful crossing two streets, he could see the beach first hand. Not just stories about it from his other frog friends. The idea was comforting and I let him loose into the grass. He didn’t hop away, he didn’t even move when I tried to encourage his new found adventure. I had to leave him. I had to open the store.

A half hour into work I wondered if the frog was having an exciting new life, far from home, without his family and friends…what had I done?!  I raced outside to find the little guy, searching through the blades of grass for his tiny lime green body. I was forming a rescue plan in my mind; I could build a little habitat in the unused bathroom sink in the back of the store for him to hang out in until I finished my shift. I would bring him back to his home on my red bricked steps. I searched for thirty minutes without luck. Every hour I ventured out again making an effort to save him from his new found peril I caused.

I was never able to find him. I was distraught. That night and several nights after I would lie in bed thinking about his fear and wished him the safety of food and shelter. I eventually forgot about him, like we all do but every once in a while I think about that day.

I have constant bouts of anthropomorphism. That coupled with my animistic and precasual thinking, my forty year old man-child mind makes an interesting playground. Well, probably only to me.

What does this have to do with today? Behold!

Did I save the lizard? Fuck lizards. I’m kidding. About a million live in my carport.

Stations

One of the hardest things is being admitted to that you’ll never be good enough for someone. Being made felt blue collar. Like there is something wrong with it. Like you can’t be a prospect because that is your station even though you’ve always strived for greater with little success and much less luck. No one looks at the first year lawyer in the one room studio with mountains of debt and thinks, loser. They latch on to that train. He’s up and coming with mobility and future prospect. The retail guy? Fuck him. He’s on a train to a dead end. You can’t pay a mortgage with love. Love isn’t good enough. How can someone beneath you possibly make you better?

Stations.

Turtle

I’m an odd little hermit; I suppose I am more like a turtle. My vulnerable flesh coated by a colorful exterior. I’m meek and when I poke my head out, you mistake the curve of my beak for a smile. I’m just a turtle.

Storyteller

“Well, Fuck…” He brought his outstretched arms in. He looked at his palms in disbelief, “I guess I’m no longer The Storyteller.” The vapor trail from the wrist rockets he fired hung frozen in the air. It was a gentle spiraling mist, almost beautiful to look at. Time was so different here. He concentrated on his wrists. The silver T locks snapped open and the golden bracelets fell towards the ground before dissolving into ether. The tiny missiles made a “ploop” sound as they entered the approaching black wall of darkness like a pebble dropped into a still pond.

“This is like some kinda Crisis on Infinite Earths bullshit,” He rubbed his wrists as he turned to retreat. The bands had made tiny marks on his skin from the discharge. The soles of his white sneakers slid on the loose gravel of the grey path. His white t-shirt was damp with sweat and his blue jeans hugged his legs, too tight to run in. “Why can’t it be a dragon? I can fight dragons…..”

He had learned to command Dreamscape. Oh, the place had rules and he bent them freely. When rules wouldn’t bend, he flat out broke them. “BDUs and boots,” his thoughts covered him in new apparel. The newly formed combat boots would help him navigate the rough trail of rocks and the camouflage blouse and trousers would…he noticed his arm in a running swing. “A black and red track suit? I am no longer the story teller..” He tried to laugh to himself.

The wall of darkness cracked the ground behind him. The void crushed the boulder he has just used for covering fire. The darkness advanced quickly. This region was lost, gone are the chocolate chip cookie mountains, the chocolate milk river and the bubblegum trees. He imagined the roar of death behind him. The sound was deafening to his ears. The pounding of his feet rang into silence. He wondered if the meadow was gone….

He had been up this path before, many times. He knew there were two drops ahead. This might give him space to breathe or at least the lift to take him into flight. Flying isn’t like it is on television or the movies. You don’t just float away effortlessly. Just for lift you have to flex every muscle in your body. The effort is taxing on the untrained but he was the Storyteller, he had mastered flight in his youth.

He quickly approached the crest of the first drop. It was a twenty foot drop but the slope was forgiving. He tensed his body for flight, he had the speed. The lip of his boot caught an errant rock and he tumbled forward, the wall of darkness roared.

“Armor!” he yelled hitting the stone slope hard on his shoulder. “Armor, armor, armor,” he called out tumbling down the side of the cliff. He contorted his body to take as little damage as possible on the mere twenty feet down. His armor never came; he was no longer the Storyteller. His wrist snapped on the granite landing. The darkness howled swallowing the crest above him.

“Jack, armor,” Jack was the curator of Hammerspace. One rule he knew how to break, when he lost control, he found external resources. He pushed himself to his feet with his good arm. Ten more feet until the second drop, Jack was either asleep or ignoring him. There were only clouds on the other side. He had never made it this far. The darkness advanced and there were no other options.

He nursed his wrist in his hand before wiping the blood from his nose, “Ten feet, four long strides and a jump, that should do it.”

The darkness cracked the base of the slope behind him. He counted his steps as he ran, “four, three, Two, ONE!” He tightened his body for flight. He could taste the metallic crimson pooling in his mouth. This was a fall he wouldn’t wake from if he failed.

The Longing

She scratched hard into the spot above her breast, not hard enough to break skin but enough to leave red welts. “Why did they do this?” She thought to herself, lying on the cot in the four walled cell she created from her mind. She wanted to rip it out, the ache, the organic pump in her chest that pushed nutrients throughout her body. “I’m nothing more than a Bio-drone….” Her thoughts trailed back to the history holo she uncovered during a research excavation.

The holo was in binary, the common language, but her brain translated it into organic speech. It sounded like a history program for infant machines. She had always been smarter than the other Bios. Younger machines were very rare. Most of the ore had already been mined and only the wealthiest machines could procreate from themselves.

She tried to push it out of her mind but she couldn’t refresh. She was a Bio-drone not a master machine. She held the holo in her hand, the red crystal inlaid into the square silver was cracked beyond repair.  She had smashed it against a limestone in panic. Now no one would believe her…and now that she was awake, she feared she would never sleep. She understood, “The Longing,” now.

The monotone line, “When, we as a people, took on the souls of humanity,” sent her skin crawling.  “What is a soul?” she had never heard that word before. “As raw materials decreased and the desire for gain increased, the only solution was organic labor,” she heard the cold voice in her head, “Through bio engineering, we discovered we could grow our own wants and needs without expending resource.” She turned white during the lessons of clone ghettos and the fall of mankind. She was glad she was a woman because they had not been described as falling in history.

She clawed at her chest again, with tears roiling down her cheeks. “The bios lacked purpose so we engineered their genetic structure in pairs; one male and one female. Unknowingly, we created a unified soul.” The next part sounded like an instruction manual for her life. “One of the pair will always want the other, your bio will dream of it, wish of it. This longing will motivate them to be productive for society. Trap them, trick them, if your bios unite..” She didn’t hear the rest of the message. By then she had the chip jammed between her palm and a limestone.

The familiar buzz of the end of a work day rang in her ears. She pushed away from her station to retreat back to the comfort of home.

He woke up, clawing at his chest……..

Milk and Attention

The glass of the sliding door wobbled out of reality.

It sounded like someone chewing rock candy and popcorn seeds.

The tube was a rough hard plastic. It entered the opening of my penis.

He was at the foot of the bed again, the cloaked silhouette, just right of the left post of the footboard that held my mattress three feet above the carpet. The same sensations occurred, the emptiness in my stomach, the silence in my ears, and the elongation of my room like a funhouse mirror. The back wall of my bedroom stretched away in the distance while the cloaked man stood fast as a focal point. I was supposed to acknowledge him.

My developing brain couldn’t translate the form. I often let my mind interpret for me, or was that an influence? He always seemed so short peering over the footboard. The last time he was helmeted. The head piece was adorned with shiny glassy eyes. His silver armor was checkered with a black diamond pattern and he had two large metallic rifles strapped to his back. That time I knew my parents were still awake on a Friday night. My brother would be perched on the yellow dusty bean bag in the living room. The pull down screen used to watch films on a movie projector would be dividing the family room from the dining room. That time I leapt from the sheets, ran down the hall and slid on my knees over the brown tile of the dining room and through the two foot opening between the screen and the floor. Then, I tumbled into the family room in a huff; “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” lit the silver screen behind me. I had slid next to the comfort of my older brother, eating popcorn and paying his frightened little brother no mind.

Other nights had fared worse.

Two things I’m sure people say I crave, Milk and Attention. I couldn’t cry for milk in a silent house or for attention. I often lumbered sleepily out of bed to get my own. I made my way down the hall, through the family room and into the kitchen. My pajamas lit against the glow of the open refrigerator door. Putting the gallon of whole milk on the counter, I retrieved an adult cup from the cupboard; the plastic glass was adored with drawn, frosted sea shells. I would wash it after and hide it in its place as to not be found out, an adult cup would not be my undoing. The kitchen was a short corridor. The sink was on the left and the refrigerator and stove on the right. At the end was a small wicker dinette with a glass top that was difficult to clean after a fried southern dinner. The dinette was the center piece to two popular exits in my house, the sliding glass door to the south and the washroom holding the side exit door to the north.

I slid my socks along the tan tile, making my way to look out of the sliding glass door that opened up onto the porch of the backyard. Here I would look at the stars. Most nights, I would make my way outside to look up and wish upon one, in a particular belt. Those nights I would breathe the cool night air and let dark green blades of grass play between my toes. Not tonight, tonight another particular star of interest dipped and made that familiar zag in a downward forty-five degree angle left. The star’s light brightened and the glass of the sliding door wobbled out of reality.
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They were always fuzzy, movements like greased glass. Their speech was incoherent, it sounded like someone chewing rock candy and popcorn seeds. The device was between my legs again, latched over, hugging my pelvis. The soft metal was cool and somewhat comforting. Spaghetti tubes stretched from my wrists and forearms, from my calves. I imagine it was particularly easy for the tubes to glide effortless into my body, even now I am told I have good veins. There was no sensation of being prone or erect, just the need to sleep and forget.

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The doctor was trying to be assuring when he said, “This will only hurt a little.” I had been in the hospital a week. I hoped that this was the last test. I longed for the comfort of my Return of the Jedi bed sheets and my real and imaginary friends. Dana, a male nurse, had been my comfort and kept me company at night, helping me with Colorforms that my Mom had brought during the day but he had changed shifts and I knew here I had no more friends. My cousin would tell me I was faking, for attention. I wondered if I should say, ”No, it’s for the unlimited supply of free milk.” I had a deal with my mom, for every shot I got or every draw of blood where I didn’t cry, I would get a Star Wars action figure. The bargain paid out well but she still owes me about a hundred of them.
A week prior, on a Saturday, I had woken up to the morning pee. “At least not the bed this time,” thinking proudly to myself, but it hurt coming out into the bowl of the toilet. When my Mom took me to the doctor, with my Grandmother in tow, my Grandmother said, “It’s all the vitamin C from orange juice.” The Doctor assured her the urine sample was dark with blood.

I was assaulted with a battery of test for seven days, a floor of sick people and a free arcade one elevator floor ride up. I convinced myself it was a fair trade off, “Tempest for two hours for two under a microscope.” And why is it that nurses always tell you to rest and sleep and then wake you up every other hour for blood and statistics?

I knew I was prone this time on the cold slab of metal, the doctors in their suits, their words comprehensible. The tube was a rough hard plastic. It entered the opening of my penis. “We are going to pump heavy water into you. This should finally tell us what is wrong.”

I hadn’t had blood in my pee since that Saturday. They never discovered the culprit. They wouldn’t listen if I told them.