Losting the Strand

Mitch flew out to Quito ahead of his classmates, a full three days earlier than the rest of the Ohlone High School Rainforest Club. He had loved the idea of being there alone, at least for a little while. The Rainforest Club had all just graduated and this was to be their senior trip: a trip into Ecuador's rainforest. It was a far cry from the wild voyage that the majority of the senior class were taking to Rosarito, Mexico, and it had appealed to Mitch for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of. He had had a crush on one of the girls in the Rainforest Club, that was why he had joined originally. But that had been months ago, she hadn't been interested in being anything more than a friend, and he had since then decided that his crush was irritating and no longer worth his time spent thinking about. All the same, he found himself drawn to the trip. He longed for something vague that he believed, for some reason, was to be found in Ecuador, and he experienced that longing in a manner that was not ever fully accessible to him. In any case, he had always hoped, absently, that he wasn't the type of young man who went to Rosarito, Mexico.

But then the trip was cancelled, and Mitch was left on his own. He got the news via email at an Internet cafe. The club was supposed to spend two weeks in the country, leaving from Quito in a van and traveling along one of the branches of the Amazon River into the forest. But then the teacher who had put the trip together suffered some sort of personal tragedy...the details were vague in the email that she sent out, but she made it clear that she could not led the trip. There was some attempts on the parts of other teachers who had been involved with the trip to the extent that they thought it was a great idea, but no one could go with the Rainforest Club down to Quito. Neither could any of the parents. Mitch's dad had bought him the plane ticket down to Quito as his graduation present, handed the ticket to him during Mitch's graduation ceremony and then quickly headed back to New Jersey where he lived with his second wife and Mitch's five-year-old twin half-brothers. In keeping with his style, Mitch's father had failed to follow up with his eldest son since then...a character trait that began to cause Mitch growing trepidation after he sent the fourth frantic email to his father asking him for money to come home.

There was no other option. Mitch's mother didn't have much money to spare and in any case, Mitch was having a hell of a time getting ahold of her. He didn't know where to buy a phone card and he didn't know who he could ask. Thinking that he would meet up with the Rainforest Club after his three days alone in the strange, dirty, magical city, Mitch had spent his relatively small lump of cash fairly quickly. He had devoted most of his time to skateboarding. The city had been noted as a center in South America for professional skaters, which was one of the primary draws for Mitch. He spent almost all of his first day at a massive skatepark, which was only one part of a sprawling, sweaty, sleazy, sprawling gigantic city park, the name of which he couldn't pronounce. He snapped pictures all day long of the beautiful, sculptured cement landscape and the massive pipes and metal bars that made up the skatepark, and he sketched impressions of the bright graffiti in his notebook, transfixed by the large-scale public art that he imagined must be legal or simply impossible for the police to crack down on. Graffiti simply was not, as a rule, as big and as bold as what he found spray painted on the cement. Everywhere he went he was staring at the graffiti. The artists didn't worry about being caught. They took their time.

On that first day he had hung out around the skatepark all day until dusk, which was when a group of 13-year-old kids started to trail him. At first he was bemused, and he imagined that they thought he was an American celebrity skate photographer. Then he became convinced that they wanted to rob him, and he left the park quickly, paranoid. The city became too big for him to exist within at night. There was no TV at the hotel. After that first day at the skatepark he stuck around the cheap, still-slummy but much brighter and more cheerful tourist section of town. Everything there reminded him of an old amusement park left to deteriorate to the state of disrepair where it seems vulgarly exposed: its cheap, bright plastic chipped and cracked. The aluminum bars that hold up the ferris wheel rusted and creaking with the effort of continuing to move in the fashion they are required. He spent most of his money on extravagant meals and alcohol, which he could not buy back in the states due to his age. Then he got the email and he didn't know what to do.

Of course his dad would eventually check his emails, and then he would come rushing to the aid of his stranded son. But as the first day passed without a response, Mitch began to worry. Of course, realistically, he knew that his dad didn't check his email much more than once a week. The concept and strong fear of being stranded, however, did not have to work hard to put down roots inside of him and grow.

At dawn on the fourth day that Mitch found himself in Quito, he woke up and realized that he had forgotten his own name. In the most pure and the most innocent spirit that he could remember experiencing while wondering anything, he wondered dazzedly who was he? Where was he? How he had found himself there, as opposed to any other places in the world? How did he happen to be this particular person? He sighed after over a minute of lying there incredibly still. He shifted in his bed. And then the moment ended and the future exploded into being, sweeping him along with it. By the end of the day, he was on a plane headed back to San Francisco courtesy of his father, the crisis over and his life completely changed forever in a way that he did not consciously recognize but felt forever afterwards as a befuddled milestone.

FLENSER

Floating on the bright blue-green incandescent water, you close your eyes and let the weight of your body drift on the surface of the pool. The sounds of children laughing and bawling, along with the thick, astringent smell of chlorine become distant, almost to the point of existing somewhere else entirely. As relaxed as you are, the sudden sting of pain in your side comes as a terrible shock. You tense and disrupt the tranquil balance upon which your body was held afloat, and all of the sudden you are beneath the cool, perfectly blue water, thrashing your arms and staring around frantically at all the bare legs and bathing suit bottoms belonging to the other swimmers. The pain is worsening, and you are panicking, but you manage to come to grips enough to examine the wound. A thin, hard strip of metal is stuck into the side of your stomach, buried deep enough that it isn’t showing the slightest sign that it might easily come out. Your hands sting with pain as you try to pull the object free, and you realize that it is lined with barbs. Several metal snakelike cables are coming off of the end, hanging limply and leading away from the pool. It’s a harpoon, you realize.

By now you’ve scrambled out of the pool and are crying out for help. The water has turned a nasty red color from all of the blood, and the mothers are calling for their children to get out. People gaze at you with a mixture of pity and antipathy, the way they look at beggars. There is repulsion in their eyes, more than anything else. Heedless of the barbs, you are tugging on the harpoon frantically and fingering the wound. If you tear it out it will cause much worse damage…you can tell after some experimental pulling that there are larger, more brutal barbs on the part of the harpoon that is lodged inside you. The cables trailing off from the harpoon have started to go taut, you notice frantically. Whatever has attacked you is now starting to draw you in, very slowly.

You are begging people for help, and you can tell you sound like a crazy person. A mother looks up at you from her beach chair. There is a look of vague pathos in her eyes and, sighing, she puts down her magazine. She glances at the two young children, who are playing quietly by her side and seem ambivalent to your situation, and she motions for you to come closer. She is matronly, with a large soft frame and long, sinewy arms. Despite the pain and alarm, you quiet your crying and control yourself as you step closer…she pulls down your swim trunks and begins, in a brusque, hurried fashion, to fondle your cock. Before you can protest, your body responds almost violently to her touch becoming aroused and then promptly ejaculating into her palm. As she lets go of you, you stumble to your knees. She wipes her hands on her towel and squeezes your shoulder. If not for a sudden, painful tug on the harpoon cables you would have fallen into a deep sleep. Another tug has you sluggishly trying to crawl away…but you don’t have the energy left and as the cables go tight you are dragged across the hot, wet pavement. Everyone, all the parents and all their children are silent now.

You see the ship as it pulls alongside you. It is made from wood and painted bright red, the same color as the bloody water in the pool. The horrid crew appear over the side of the ship and they toss nets over you and drag you closer and closer. They secure you to the side, and set off towards the darker water where they came from. The children start to play again, shouting and laughing tentatively at first, louder and louder as you disappear.

A Way of Life, Maintained

Lost in my profound revulsion, I did not notice Midge returning my stare as I stood, transfixed, next to her desk.

"Elias?" Her voice, which sounded very concerned, snapped me out of my stupor.

"Are you done with the financial reports?" I asked automatically, still unable to entirely look away from the massive, swollen grapefruit that had grown on her belly over the past few weeks.

She gawked at me. "I'm a receptionist," she said in a tone of voice that was a mingling of apologizing, patronizing and showing concern. She's already acting like a mother, I reflected in disgusted awe. "Do you want me to page Accounting?"

"That's fine," I said, pulling out my sunglasses and slipping them on over my eyes. "I'm going for a jog."

I was convinced that the amount of pregnant women in the world was gradually increasing. On all the tabloids, all there was to read about was so and so being pregnant, so and so trying to be pregnant, so and so being in a move where so and so is pregnant. Before Midge's announcement in the office, I spent so much energy avoiding those grotesque reproductive sacks while in public places that I never even considered one of them might start to grow in the womb of a co-worker. My boss had privately suggested that I try to resolve my fascination with Midge's pregnancy, as it may be causing her anxiety. I assured him that I was far too charming to cause anyone anxiety, even a pregnant woman. He agreed begrudgingly. "At least try to stop making those horrible faces," he said with a sigh.

I had always been a zealot for scientific thought, and have violently opposed all types of spirituality. Christianity, Ouiji boards, anything having to do with the moon or extraterrestrials, I hated all of it. Regardless, in order to insulate myself against the pandemic of impregnated women, I decided to keep a psychic on my payroll. Immediately after leaving the office, I did a six-mile sprint over to the Sunset District and let myself in through my psychic's bathroom window, as was our agreement.

"Give it to me, Olive," I screamed as I dropped to her kitchen floor and started to do push-ups. She had the kitchen table covered in dried tea leaves, which she was hanging over, suspended naked from the ceiling while singing the National Anthem.

"You should avoid blondes for the entire month of Mars," she said, the consternation of soothsaying making her voice sound like a cat fight. "And the redhead has crabs. You should wax your chest and you should give me another pay raise."

Obviously, as she was a spiritual individual, I hated Olive with a passion that was probably near-insane. However, she had answers that I desperately needed. Because, despite the terror with which I suffered the presence of reproductive sacks, I was stricken with the monstrous need to fuck. It had gotten to the point in my 47th year of life that, if I attempted to not attend the nightly sex orgies of which I was a vigorous participant for even one evening, I would rip everything in my apartment to shreds in my sleep. As you may know, sexual intercourse is the leading cause of the reproductive growth sacks. As I have sexual intercourse with at least four or five women every night, this is a major concern for me. There are methods of preventing reproductive growth sacks from occurring, such as wearing a plastic sleeve over your ding-dong, or compelling the woman to ingest pills, but any and all of these methods are flawed. There is no 100 percent prevention of impregnation. Hence the psychic. She tells me who in the sex orgy might get knocked up if I finoodle with them, and I avoid them. It is actually very simple. And in this way, my way of life is maintained.

After I got all the redheads kicked out of the sex orgy that evening, the night went very well. I did have to make a special effort to avoid the blondes, and I had to go through the annoying and embarrassing process of making sure that none of my sex partners were secretly blondes who had had a dye job. To do so required me to secretly shave a small strip of hair off the back of my potential sex partner's head and analyze the roots. At around 2 a.m. I finished up, slapped on my jumpsuit and hit the street for the 5-mile sprint home. By the time I hit the sack, I had roughly 2 and a half hours to sleep. That's the way it has to be. If I get anymore sleep than that, I'll start to dream. And if I dream, I will have the nightmare.

It's always the same. I'm 21 years old and my girlfriend is pregnant with our second spawn. I have to get two jobs in order to support the tiny monsters. I'm stressed constantly, and I have no time for my mixed martial arts training, so I'm starting to get a potbelly. On my one day off of work every Sunday, the offspring jumps on top of me at 7 a.m. It forces me to make it breakfast, and it forces me to watch its bright-colored cartoon shows. It drags me outside and forces me to throw it a football over and over and over, forever and ever. I may not be Tom Cruise, but my way of life is nearly perfect. 

Those nightmares, conversely, are the concise vision of Hell.

Salvation From the Giant Lobster is in a Paper Castle

In the weeks after I was discharged from the Institute, I found work at Silent Partners, Inc. as a Pan-Departmental Substitute Employee. The work was simple, said the man who hired me. He was wearing a checkerboard suit, punctuated by a large red bow-tie. The work would always be mind-numbingly simple, no matter what it was I would be required to do on any given day, and it would always be repetitive to a degree that all but a certain type of person would find to induce suicidal feelings, the man said as he flipped through my resume, and the notes from my various doctors that certified me as non-dangerous. The dress code, the man added with a quick glance up from the papers to appraise my outfit, was formal attire, with some eccentricities allowed. In an effort to reduce employee suicide attempts, the managers had revoked rules forbidding bizarre color combinations and patterns.

Due to the dangerously mentally unbalancing nature of the work, most of the employees were substitutes, like myself. The turnover rate for employees at Silent Partners was so high that just about everyone was replaced by the end of the month.  In fact, the only people I ever seemed to meet on the job were fellow substitutes. Every week I was given a new, utterly different and always repetitive task. My first week, I discarded every third page from each of the 3,124 customer files that had been complied by a national corporation that sold stationary. The next week, I stamped 2,394 certificates that certified such and such a person passed an assessment test and were thereafter eligible for an increase in responsibility and wages at an international corporation that produced brochures for Medicare providers. During my third week, I went through personal information for 12,304 voters and marked each file with one of three colors: red if the voter was between the ages of 18 and 25, purple if between 25 and 40 and yellow if between 40 and 75.

Since starting this job, I've hardly even seen that damn Giant Lobster, which used to stalk me everywhere.

I went through 10 therapists. I was required to see a therapist twice a week by the Institute, and every three weeks, on average, I was assigned a new one. Each time, the new therapist would ask, with different degrees of bewilderment, what exactly Silent Partners, Inc. did.

"We fulfill all paperwork filing, rearrangement and processing for our valued clients, most of whom are major international or national corporations!" I would sing.

They tried to get me to quit. They tried to get me promoted. They tried to get me to move out of the storage unit I was living in. They tried to convince me to take lunch breaks. I'll never understand where therapists come from. Who are they? What are they really trying to accomplish? How would they feel, if a Giant Lobster decided to ruin their lives? For five years I worked as a substitute and I lived in my storage unit and I went twice a week to the therapists. Then, suddenly, change began to encroach threateningly on my happiness.

I was called into the office of the regional manager, George Gorges. He showed me the employment forms that I had filled out five years earlier, when I was first hired. Did I recognize them?

I nodded proudly. I have always had incredibly legible handwriting.

"The reason I ask is because we've just recently noticed that you opted for stock options instead of full pay," Mr. Gorges said nervously. "Of course, people don't usually take that option because it is typically financially unfeasible. I'm not even sure why it's on the form!"

He chuckled, while I watched on, unsure what he was talking about. Seeing that I wasn't laughing, he became very solemn.

"We're willing to accept that you made a mistake," he said, frowning, "and we're prepared to pay you $43,780 in back pay that you were unable to collect due to that mistake." He held out a piece of paper. "If you sign here, you can have your money."

Then I laughed. "I don't need money. I don't want money. Please," I pushed away the paper. "Keep your money."

He turned white, and sighed. "Well," he paused for several seconds and paced around his desk several times. "I guess I'll be the first one to welcome you to the Board of Directors," he swallowed uneasily and offered his hand. I shook it obediently, still staring at him and waiting for him to tell me what to do. "You're a major stockholder in our company," he said uncertainly after a few awkward seconds.

Suddenly it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to tell him what to do. I gaped at him in horror, and fled. I didn't leave the cubicle I had been assigned that week for the rest of the day. The next Monday, my supervisor looked at me confusedly when I approached him for my weekly assignment, and I had to squabble with him for several minutes before he shrugged and gave me that week's job. After that, however, things generally went back to normal. For the time being, at least.

I'm increasingly worried about my future. I received a letter, taped to the assignment I was given one Monday morning. From the markings on the envelope I could tell that they had tried to mail it to the fake address I had given on my job application. The letter informed me that I had become the major shareholder in the company, and that I could sell those shares for around $10 million. This sort of gibberish means nothing to me, but it causes me mounting anxiety. I have the sense that they want something of me, and I can only hope that they don't mean to take my job away. I try to explain the severity of my situation to my therapists, but they don't seem to understand. I have seven therapists now, one for every day of the week, and I am their only client. Somehow throughout this mess, I've been given "Gold Patient" status at the Institute. Their big push right now is to get me to move out of my storage unit.

They don't understand. No one understands. Aside from those all too-brief, wonderful moments that I'm flipping through those files, stamping, highlighting or simply rearranging, I live in constant fear of that goddamn Giant Lobster who is always trailing me. He's been trying to get me to take up smoking since I was 12 years old, what makes them think he'll stop now?