Nothing No One
REMINGTON GRAVES
The knock at my door came some time past midnight. It was faint and ominous. Small fist.
I opened the door to no one.
Ten minutes later came the knock again. This time a bit heavier.
My chewing stopped.
Knock, knock.
I chewed the rest of the chips in my mouth and stood up. Stared at my hunting knife on the kitchen table. I heard my futures self saying, “you should have grabbed that knife,” with a dying tone. I waited by the door.
The knock came again, this time gently and in two-second intervals.
Quietly I unlocked my door and yanked it open.
Nothing. No one.
Closing the door, I glanced at my staircase next to the front door and considered sitting there and waiting for the next knock.
Walking gently back to my living-room couch, I thought I heard sounds in the vacant room upstairs.
The sound of running water. Somewhere. The next apartment, maybe. Upstairs?
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
I looked at my cell phone to see if a call might be coming in of the person on the other side. Black screen.
My feet hurt from work and now here I was wondering who was playing these games.
A hot shower would do wonders right now, I whispered, and I wouldn’t be able to hear this nonsense anymore.
I stared at the off-white walls around me, the glass sliding door and its dripping patterns, my feet, the water spinning down the rusty drain.
My jaw was tightened up. When did I start biting the inside of my lip? I wondered.
The rushing sound of water abruptly ceased and I stood there motionless. Drip, drip, drip…
Ding, dong, came the door bell.
Fuck, I thought, this better be someone with a problem, I am now ready to break someone’s mouth open. I walked out naked and wet and answered the door with attitude.
No one. Nothing. A soft breeze.
A distant dog barking.
An automobile passing by a few blocks away.
I walked over to the couch wet and small-cocked and smiling.
What fun to have nothing better to do…
than to bother
the
gods.
∞
No Going Back
REMINGTON GRAVES
She wore blue lipstick and wandered aimlessly underneath hot-pink dotted lights in a dark room with designer drink in hand. The crowd craved each other’s attention in silence and assumed apathy. The music bent the walls and turned the place into a breathing organism of psychedelic music and malevolent morose. Pills of all colors spun and skated from under tables as people walked, ran and danced sweaty faced and furiously fucked up. Sunglasses reflecting the dark dance floor and the lights on stage. White-hair-model types, cigarettes in mouths, young and old, vampires and the naive, all in unappealing ceremony.
“Hey, don’t we know each other?”
“The oldest line in the book. Nice.”
“No, I mean it. Sally, The Goat, introduced us.”
“You know Sally?”
“She’s my aunt.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, you were wearing the same heart-shaped glasses you’re wearing now that day. Pool party. I had the doob, remember?”
“Oh, Greg. Right.”
“It’s George, but close enough. You’re Margot, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Can I buy you a drink, Margot?” He said leaning into her competing with the loudness of the band. “Anything you like.”
“I’ll take a Milk On The Bloody Rocks.”
“Sounds good–I’ll make it two. Be back in a jiff. Don’t go anywhere.”
The pink and orange strobes waved in warmth through her vibrating skull as she crossed her legs and waited for the wanker with her whistle-wetter. This is why I never go out, she though. This is nowhere.
“Here you go, sexy,” he said handing her the Bloody drink.
“Thanks.”
“You like this trash,” he asked raising an eyebrow in the direction of the band.
“I am a huge fan of Angels From Hell. They’re the only reason I came out tonight.”
“Shit…I am sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s okay. You must like that soft shit like Black Faggot.”
“Funny. And, yes, I love that band.”
“Figures.”
“What?”
“Black Faggot is the Disney version of Angels From Hell.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Anyway, you get along with your aunt?”
“Which one, the goat?”
“Yes, the goat. You have two goats that are related to you?”
“Well, no but–“
“Precisely.”
“She is pretty groovy. I mean, hardly anybody can understand her. We bought a cute bell that we hang around her neck. She has the entire backyard to gallop around now…well, since her husband died, you know?”
“She hates that bell.”
“Really? We thought she was nuts about it.”
“She was nuts that she couldn’t gallop hard enough to get it off herself.”
“Oh…I had no idea.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t speak goat.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
“Can you shut up for the rest of the show, please? I don’t want to miss this band.”
“Umm…of course.”
The Angels levitated on stage in black leather and began their drop-tuned terror of slow and spinning strident pandemonium. The fog machine reached the entire place and everybody was lost and afraid if ever, they would find their way back.
She smiled and sipped.
There was no going back.
∞
If For A Short Moment
REMINGTON GRAVES
The solemn sigh carried on and I wondered why sullen, why surrender, why defeat at the deftness of the day? And the winter of my discontent drove me to a wailing, pushed me to a dissonant drivel, babbling the better parts of my present. How many years had I laid dormant? Ascertaining at my grave, a ghost realized, I was aware of the carcass that carried me. Loathing and languid, my breath carried on like white noise reaching beyond a forlorn frequency. The Remington Rand invoked the gentleman rogue, and the nights swallowed my sunrises with tapping keys becoming the backbeat.
I sat on a black leather couch sending and receiving patterns out past my walls into the seething ether, humming as they went, in unlistenable hertz, keeping the anxiety attack to a mere bark. My hands had called to me in that moment, waving their tentacles pleading for some peace, agonizing for an answer–what are we to you, they said, what violence shall we caress to appease our master? My feet, cold and numb, shifting as distant traffic made its way away from home or back there again.
Schubert’s Le Voyage Magnifique sheared the existential pretensions that should’ve been enough. Piano keys dancing, highs and lows, like rain drops on the heads of dead soldiers somewhere far away across a kingdom by the sea, somewhere far away from me. What would it be like to kill an Arab? I thought reaching for an old cold cup of coffee that had sat there for a few nights.
What right do I have to clamor at the corners of my conscience, I sneered whilst beholding designer shoes atop an ottoman. True, my youth had said farewell some time ago. The weight of disappointment, co-conspirator with gravity as I felt my countenance attempt correction with a silly smile.
Hammer on, Franz, you brilliant fuck, and allow me to fester in this ephemeral state of failure. If for a short moment. For tomorrow, I rise again the phoenix.
And this way I carry on– I am both, Set and Horus, I die at night, born again the morning.
A hot shower in this crippling cold night might deem me cogent.
∞
Blunderer
REMINGTON GRAVES
Leggings arrayed with upside-down crosses came to my attention a few months ago at a Mobil in the middle of the night. A young girl fiendishly frolicked by giggling at her phone as it sat in her hand in selfie-high-up angle.( The trip gag should make its way back anytime now.) Her long, black pointy nails glistened under fluorescent lights in the gas station island. To my further disenchantment, she sported a shiny sulfur symbol patch on her pretty purse. Her white long hair with its lavender highlights, levitated with the wind and whimsically lured whatever prey available–I looked around for such a sucker.
“What are you doing on that phone?” I asked.
“I’m vlogging, do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind. What’s ‘vlogging’?”
“Great. Thanks.”
“What’s that symbol on your purse mean?”
“Fuck…really, dude?! I don’t need no Christian giving me shit right now.”
“What gave it away,” I said with a serpentine smirk, “Is it my alligator shirt?”
“Look, man…I’m a witch, okay. No, I don’t worship the devil. This is some ancient shit. You wouldn’t get it. And a baby pink Lacoste shirt? What is this the year nineteen-eighty-two?”
“You’re a witch? Wow.”
“Yeah, so…”
“Do you have a witch channel or something?”
“Yeah, I do. What of it?”
“Just curious.”
“What kind of witch are you?”
“A real one.”
“Are there fake witches?”
“Oh, yeah, believe me. I study ancient texts. Read a whole bunch and shit. Trust me, its heavy stuff.”
“What makes you a witch? I’m simply curious.”
“Well…I–”
“Are you a Satanic Witch?”
“Hell, no. I’m a good witch.”
“Satanic witches are bad?”
“Obviously!”
“Well, not to me. I am not that educated in the subject.”
“Exactly. I am. I am actually in a hurry…but, take it from me. That’s some selfish shit right there.”
“And the kind of witch you are is not, right? What I mean is, you do things for others or for the greater good. Something like that?”
“Yeah, You got it. Look, I gotta go and buy some alcohol before they close here. And I need to finish this video for my fans. I have a lot of subscribers and YouBoobs kind of pays me, so…I am a professional.”
“Oh, okay. That’s interesting. I won’t hold you up. I was simply curious.”
“No worries, dude…take care,” she said walking towards the front door of the store and stopped after a few steps, “Hold on here.”
“Yes?”
“Was all this some strategy to get my number?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Very obvious, dude. But..I think you’re cute so…”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Here take my number.”
“Okay.”
“Save it to your phone.”
“All right,” I said as I took my phone out and opened my chess app as she mumbled on.
“Got it?”
“That strategy paid off,” I said as I checkmated the simulation champion chess player at a supposed age 11 level.
“Okay, man, cool. Text me sometime soon, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
“Cool.”
“You ever hear of Magnus Carlsen?”
“Is he a gamer or a vlogger?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Hmm…don’t think so. Why?
“Just curious. I think he’s a Blunderer.”
“Oh…okay. Yeah, I think I’m subscribed to his channel.”
“That makes sense.”
“Don’t forget to text me okay?”
“I got your number.”
∞
I Should Get Up
REMINGTON GRAVES
I came home and threw myself on the couch, defeated and deservingly enervated. The day had drilled its devilish talons in my derriere and I exhaled relieved knowing this day, Sunday, was my “Friday.” Franz Schubert showed me his frenzied showmanship in maddening melodies as I kicked my cowboy boots off. Breathed like a morphined monk…rubbed the tension on the back of my skull tentatively, closing my eyes in grunting grimace. Breathed some more.
Sometimes I don’t feel like composing another song for the band I play in. Sometimes the band you play in doesn’t want you and you know it intuitively. The ten-speed stares at you tempting you to embark on the trail near your home…to smell the dying leaves, to smell the cold bite of winter on freshly rained dirt, to see the bunnies bouncing beside the bicycle. The typewriter turns slowly and gives you the eyes. The paintbrush shifts in its place. The camera you spend thousands of dollars clamors inside a pitch-black closet like a gagged girl taken by criminals demanding too high a ransom.
I should get up, I thought. Do something productive…create something, seize the fucking day. Even do the damn dishes. Call some broad to come do my laundry. But I don’t want to do that. I want to sit here on the couch, my cock and balls warm and cozy nestled betwixt my thighs free from the cutting cold outside. Kick on some Kubrick or some motherfucking Sierra Madre, which I have been trying to get to.
A hot shower would be great. Or a banana shake. I can make those now. A young blonde birdy taught me how.
I still have to lift some weights. Girls like nice arms, I hear.
Maybe I’ll just cheat at working hard and write about these thoughts instead.
∞