Posts Tagged Freddy
Freddy’s a Mess – The Paragraphs That Knocked Me Dead
{What follows is the passage that killed my Wrimo spirit on day 3. It was too directionless, purposeless for a novel, so I am back to writing other stuff, but I thought I’d share this meandering passage…}
The morning marches in uneven increments. We think we understand how time progresses as we work, whether we’re pulling weeds or dinking and dunking with numbers. We think that work gives us some regularity to our experience of time, but in reality, we imprison ourselves in boxes of ticks as if we’re stomping our feet, marching to the beat of a drummer who will never die, who thuds with the pulp of an inflated heart, and we feel hairs changing to gray, feeling at the same time perhaps an opportunity to defer the gray.
The carpets are well worn and on some days, Freddy sees 100-mile-an-hour tape all over various loose threading portions of the carpet, but there aren’t any portions like that. Freddy seems to transport himself to a spot in the future when the carpet has never been replaced but the workers have been there all along. We wear through these paths in the carpet as we go to the restroom or often, back and forth between the break room. In the break room, every time he’s there, Freddy reflects on all of the large drinking vessels that get filled with purpose and wonders why anyone with these jugs would ever need to go back multiple times per day. We’re all good like our websites say. We spend our days drinking gallons and gallons of water. Coffee and water get tossed all over the rug, usually after the jugs have been filled, and the rug has amazing resiliency as the liquids seem to evaporate as you watch, before you could ever grab a roll of paper towel. But all of these liquids through all of these years must rob the carpet of beauty. There’s no way to think of it otherwise. Then there are those times when all of the people in the cubicle farm, gradually filled with an increasing despair, a destitute that grows like mold, surely billions of spores of that stuff growing through the carpet fibers. Those cubicle farm people need a break from the bleating of the insanity, from the pounding of the ping of the fluorescent lights, keyboards with varying degrees of greasy finger stains and oceans of crumbs between the keys making all of the sounds fuzzy with the clickishness, and they leave the cubicle suite and flow into the giant building hallways, normally riding the elevator known to be something like an Read the rest of this entry »
The Evil Flow of Two Buildings – A NaNo Excerpt
We float over to the bank building on the same block as the park, directly North of the park. It is a strange animal, a lanky thing with legs curving out from the bottom of it, and it is about 25 stories. It has gold windows, highly reflective, so when Freddy sits in a space in the park where the light from the windows is bright, he feels as though he is actually in the sun, but then, here is the shaky business of that building: the light from the sun actually creates a coolness that’s more frigid than standing in the shade. Freddy thinks it is a direct alteration of the sun performed by some evil that hides beneath the gold and bright surfaces of the windows. Freddy is sure that something terribly unethical occurring inside of that building, a large blob that lives on several floors. It is so contaminated, it freezes eyes and burns into Freddy’s stomach.
Finally, still on the same block but backing up to the park directly to the East is the most sickening garage building you’ve seen. It has been painted on the outside, whitewashed with a warm cocoa paint, the color so warm, it sparks a sense of smell, that smell of industrial paint that is most similar to the nice smell of Elmer’s glue that Freddy got attached to in the second grade.
Freddy had tried to park in this garage and the experience was horrifying. He spiraled up and up, getting an upset stomach, finally finding an empty spot, looking desperately for a stair case to get back to the street level. He climbed down the stairs, climbed because they were so wicked, worn and ugly, and the walls created a claustrophobia even for one who rarely experiences such things except when surrounded by people. Freddy felt as though he were on a journey to the hell many don’t know. There are many hells, but he was going to the one where you find all of the evil souls who tortured you during your lifetime, directly or not, and this particular hell, you never leave. Freddy has been to one hell from where some massive power lifted him up by collar, broken fingernails, ripped face, tired eyes, rotted teeth and dangly, soupy muscles, and placed him gently in an AA hall where there were strange-looking angels who proceeded to save him from and continue to lift him out of that hell. But on that day in the garage, Freddy knew he was heading to a place where there was not going to be any rescue until he opened the door to Rollin Avenue, which is on the East side of the garage, on the opposite side of the park, and at that point, something buoyed his spirit, but he was sure it was false hope, seeing the man with only one leg and a crooked Cardinals hat with milky foam running down his chin and on to his old, caked jeans. All around Rollin Avenue there was the crumbling dust of tan buildings, acting like a sand storm, raping the eyes, with cars darting North and South, speedily to get through the horrors of the death of a city. Freddy mumbled I am lost and I pray for my death, but as he walked around the corner and started heading West on 14th, his spirit started to lift for no reason.
On the outside of this sick parking garage, back on the park side, the diagonal lines of the up and down platforms of the spiral are visible and when Freddy looks carefully, he sees the evil grins of millions of dead souls. He promised never to park in that place again, and he has not even walked on Rollin since that day that almost struck him down. Sometimes, he sees that foam spittle running again, glowing, flowing, eating all that is in its path and he is sure that he will be a big foam guy as his life ends unless there is an angel that ends it on a timeline that is quicker than the one in Freddy’s deepest fears.
How the Sewer Ruins Christmas – NaNo Excerpt
The cement slithers in the coolness of the creepy blue air and Freddy’s feet feel the grind through the Florsheims. He’s been wanting new shoes for weeks, but he hates shopping, and reflection on this reminds of him of the thickness of Christmas that is approaching too quickly. The neighbors put out their Halloween lights in September and this is his signal to run from the evils of the season, not of Halloween but of nature’s darkness that places mold inside of Freddy’s brain cells and makes them smell so that other people can see this seeping gas coming from Freddy’s head and he prays every morning for a little light in the season of fall. It never comes, but all of man’s false lights blast his head with and fuse the mold, growing it fast, allowing it to steal any sense of worth. This is true for Freddy, this effect of man’s outdoor lights. The lights wash his brain cells. His mind feels power leaving as the water runs down his body, down the driveway and into that sewer that has trillions of pieces of clay from 60 years ago, clay that man thought would last forever but that now barely holds the slick green, moldy water. Freddy thinks that the water comes back up in the lawns, in through the electrical systems and then into the outdoor lights. He walks down the sidewalk and watches these lights in a broad overview, looking down the street at perhaps 9 houses, all with lights that seem to be fused with evil, they seem to be seeping a green that makes the light some sort of power that evaporates the good that only occasionally floats in the air of the neighborhood.
NaNo Etude 5 – It Ended Long, Long Ago
One day Freddy realized that his entire unconscious undertow was against the world, and he thought, yes, all the way against the world. If Freddy thought too long and hard about his unconscious desires and judgments, he would need to be locked up, but he couldn’t stop. A chocolate creme Oreo and he was never going to stop now.
The water under the sharp white bridge was entirely calm even when people dove into it.
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