Like the Reality Before the Birth

A Story by ZackOfBridge

Vague words like existentialism and God

Hugh, hughie, ewy, sat at his desk, the butt of a highlighter in his mouth, a bright plastic play-cigarette and printed sheets with vague words like paradigm, existentialism and God. He liked to highlight the words, even if they did not necessarily need it and actually he highlighted the dullest words because he felt a great shame for them. He liked the tea at his side, but it did not taste like coffee and therefore he did not care for it much, but drank it and let it burn his tongue. A car alarm caught him in reading aloud, which he did often at the request of one of his professors, sometimes he even began to say stories aloud, and the stories were not written down. Mostly they were about men and women, a man and woman, and a fish who wanted to start a business selling saltwater tea and made it big one night in Boston. He read aloud from the article which related to the insignificance of spoken language because all communication is miscommunication is mass-communication
   He read and the alarm started, and he parted his blinds with his hands. A trio stood around an SUV, the hood open, and they kicked it on the sides and the tires and the alarm lived in the walls of Hugh’s apartment and he wanted to evict it, and he wanted the car to eat the trio and shut up about it and he yelled, “meh meh meh,” with the car. And he thought yes, I am going insane before throwing his leather clipboard at his book shelf.
   He left the apartment, on his porch his bell peppers were not getting enough sun, he pushed them into the light. On the short walk to his car he fancied the white splotches of bird s**t on the blacktop. Like a Jackson Pollock if Jackson Pollock could have actually achieved autonomy of creation. In his car, coupons carpeted the passenger side in an orgy of deals and steals, and a stapler was there too, and a growing crack in the window, somehow he taught himself to adore the crack, it was like his bell peppers and he wanted it to grow. He decided he was crazy and started the car with the radio turned so low because it was off completely. He told himself a story while he drove:
   The highway is the fool’s serpent. It suggests to you that maybe you’ll reach those mountains there, and the margarita sun down, but really it goes no where, just another town. He used to take a shortcut through a town when he rode the highway home. By shortcut, he went through a town he couldn’t remember the name to and he never wondered whether the townspeople knew they were just a periphery for shortcutters. And he’d get home and invite her over, and she’d say ewy, what are you doing back and he’d say I just want to get under the red blanket with you, and that never meant sex, because he did not like blankets during copulation, they reminded him of theatre curtains. The red blanket was a place for two in the afternoon. The two get under the blanket, and he says, “now its just us, this is the whole universe under here and everything else is outside of it.”
   And she would say that didn’t make sense.
   So, he said, who gives a s**t? If everything else is out there, and its just us in here than there is nothing out there. And he thought, this is what the womb must have been like, but she said it would be much louder in the womb with all the stomach noises, and he said he was hungry.

Hugh heard three honks in a turn, the third one was so close and loud it shattered the windshield as the other car joined him. Time brought them together like two tiger-eye marbles, and it slowed for them, and he watched as the crack in his window sprouted until it couldn’t anymore and it harvested, thousand seeds of glass shards. It was loud, like in the womb, with the noise of the street and the belly of the town, a siren, a gasp, a hiss of the fools serpent like a whisper outside, a constant like the reality before the birth.

© 2015 ZackOfBridge

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Reviews

Chadvonswan

I have to agree with Gaston, this was damn well written. It was very different from any of your other writings, short and subtle yet thick and juicy with literary pulp. It seemed like you were writing with a vague smirk, about to laugh at what youre doing, but never laughing, not even breathing. Doodness in this, oddness and vivid doodness

Posted 8 Years Ago

Gaston Villanueva

This is my favorite thing you've written, Mr. Puente

"And he thought, this is what the womb must have been like, but she said it would be much louder in the womb with all the stomach noises, and he said he was hungry." - I liked this a lot, along with plenty of other things.

I haven't seen you on here in awhile haha