I knew I thought I smelled you

I am getting so sick of this you spineless bastard. Yeah, that’s right you stupid invertebrate, I am going on record claiming that you were conceived out of wedlock. I’ve never had a problem with your kind before, but this has just gone too far.

I’ve given you more than one chance. Admittedly, you gave me about six months to cool off and that was quite kind of you after how things ended. I was just telling some friends last night about our encounter and how much it rattled me. If I were a cage, and you were a swift breeze or a jailed hawk, I would be rattling nonstop. That’s how deep you’ve cut.

At first you were just a bad dream; a Disconsolate Dream I mentioned to those close to me but otherwise chose to keep strapped intimately under my vest. The infectious poison of your existence was meant to be contained only in my head, and not spread from the darkness beneath your oily slithers into more natural and humane lighting.  Yes, I know you were raised in a hole in the ground and probably left to fend for yourself without parental guidance. But that is the byproduct of literally being a bastard and the topic is no longer up for debate.

You attacked me, unprovoked. I was a gentleman, enjoying an active lifestyle and good company, and I absentmindedly let the ball slip into your court. Reaching to get back what was rightfully mine, you exploded from the stacked bushels of my unconscious and into what social psychologists call my “personal space.” What you did was completely unacceptable but at least you knew your role and quickly receded to the hell from which you came. I almost blame myself more than I blame you, because a chance still stands that you are entirely of my creation; an entity of my incisive decisions.

Then, the lull. A full half year (or half full year) passed, you no doubt hibernating and planning the next public display of your sickness. Me, assuming you had been taught a lesson and dispersed of; a diluted pupil.

A huge mistake in reasoning that turned out to be. I fell enmeshed into the web you could never have spun yourself because god-forbid if you can spin webs then we are all doomed! Lying across a beautiful display of nature - showing yourself off like a sparkler on a birthday cake, seemingly winking at me with your rheumy, obsidian eyes - you waited. Weighted like the smashing end of a thrown gavel; the spinning conclusiveness of an impossible 200-year life sentence. Where you have been hidden is now of little importance. What matters now is erasing you completely from my life.

August Snowballs

We in the first-world are blessed with a world full of outlets; places where we can sit down, plug-in, and recharge our batteries. With so many outlets and opportunities to refresh it seems amazing that we can hold secrets so well. We have death bed secrets, sexy secrets, dawn and dusk secrets, corporate secrets, and seasonal secrets; egging someone is falls into all those categories save dawn and corporate.

On a slippery night in early August, with summer twisting its heating coils like an author his friction, we walked. Like brave handmaidens, we lock and unlocked our leg joints in an effort to complete the task at foot. Laughter floats to us through a thin layer of cheap foliage; three men are drinking cards and playing malt liquor at a rusty tin table. In the distance, a cat barks. We three, one of us a King, reach the main causeway and turn right; one of us executes a more precise turn, for he is wearing Velcro.

Minutes pass, cars float by, then minutes come back for seconds and for an instant, time stands still. Ahead, a fork in the road. I pick it up, examine it, stick it in my drawers, and then we knife to the left. We search for the mythical Qdoba, short on stature but thick in all the right places. Jake, ever the Snack Snake, insists we find Qdoba. The King, like a gentleman, walks on the inside, protecting the children from a world of exhaustion and Tom Cruise control.

Suddenly, it’s Christmas. A snowball fight has commenced, and we have been chosen as worthless opponents. The first snowball strikes the top of my dome, glances off my glasses, and misses Jake by mere inches. I pause, admiring the determination it must have taken to pack a snowball from the one inch of snow North Carolina receives per year, place it in the freezer, save it for early August, and choose a King as a target for the incubated and crystallized ice-comet. One is required to bow at such craftsmanship, so I did examining the aftermath. By the time I reached up and discovered the snowball had peed on my head, the car had sped around the corner. Through some alchemic transformation, the snowball turned egg, the King became Konfused, and the moment turned golden. Or, at least, yellow.

Inside Qdoba, like Jonas preening himself in the lung of the whale, I wiped the egg from my face and hair. Looking into the mirror, I smiled, remembering that some people crack eggs in their hair when they want to treat it right. But when you treat something right on your own, what is left? Nothing, you have an empty carton of eggs and a hot mess in your hair. I, on the other hand, was blessed with a free egg; my carton at home still sported a dozen. It isn’t every night that you get salon-quality hair treatment, a burrito full of chicken, and get hit with an “August Snowball.” I may have started a trend or started a war, but either way, I am the origin.