In the morning, he lay motionless, staring at the ceiling. Looking at the blankness, total emptiness, he wondered about his life.
Useless….
Useless…
Useless…
Useless…
What had he done to deserve a paper job, God? God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Why? Why him?
It echoed through his mind. He tried to think about it further. His thoughts were warped and strange, like a raw sheet of bubble wrap, enveloping the stupidity of his brain… His life… The road of unkempt stones. Water ran over the wings of a broken thing, wood and rubble crept along the sides of a home.
He sat in isolation, thinking to himself. Thinking…. Thinking… Thinking of that glorious world past his bed, past his home, where the great Heroes of the World ran their business in the sky.
…
In the night, in the deep, great, starry sky, where the sun hung still on the horizon. He drove on the street to the wonderful Buddy's, with its glowing neon sign.
Faint wisps from dreams rushed through his mind, with steam rising in the air, tiny metal cups hung along the sides of a yellow house, and a bearded man wearing pleasant rags watched him. Stared at his beady eyes, his tired shape.
Buddy's was a wonderful place to eat a couple of pancakes, and wash them down with syrup. There was a feeling of freedom, of flying through the air and waving goodbye to work and money. Where pink bubbly lights oozed the feeling of night and death.
He savored the pancakes. The smell of them reminded him of memories… Fading like strange sand… Reality itself was like a strange bent thing, broken, split apart, creeping about in his mind… He remembered fall leaves, drums beating…. The snow clumped at the sides of his home. And the screams in the fallen night. The yelp, like a beaten dog jumping for its life as someone fired a gun.
They were gone now, as was the house, as was the place. His family, the Christmas mornings, the breaks, the homework, the pencils, the desks, the chairs, the people. School… The summer… The great voices, and the urge to run about, relax in the shade, go outside and wonder about the weird world, with its filth and strange absurdities.
He arrived at the wonderful place, with the concrete restaurant looming over the rising sun. And three cars laying put in the squat parking lot. He went through the door, into the restaurant.
He sat down, at a table by the lights, nearest to the outside. He leaned against the icy window, the glass smelling of Clorox and Cleaning Fluid. Looking at the sun permeate past the clouds, the sky. And in the mist, in the atmosphere, he watched the strange shapes the lights made as the heat bubbled from Buddy's...
The waiter tapped his shoulder and gave him a plate of pancakes covered in syrup. He smiled at her. His heart feeling particularly heavy, his mind feeling empty and alone… Dust sifting through the corner of his mind, and the thoughts of death and nothingness made him especially depressed.
When she left, he was alone. On the other side, near the blank walls, was a man wearing glasses, wearing a suit and tie, drinking coffee and reading the news.
He wrenched a plastic fork free from a dispenser and attempted to eat a pancake. But when he held it in his hand, a warm rush of feeling bloomed through him, and then the fork grew lighter in his hand.
He turned gray, bile rushed up to his throat, oozing upwards, lightheaded as he sat there, and woozy. Blood crept from his nose, and some strange force pushed him to stand up and walk around dazed…
Lights flashed like great torches…. Growing further and further as men and women walked to stare at him like geese with rubbernecks, further and further growing these necks, until they were serpents, snakes…
Strange things… Like a process that mixed people and Strontium, as radiation leaked into the earth, and men became gods, and someone mopped the floor, and someone yelled at him… And soup flew through the air.
"Ha! Ha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!", he laughed suddenly, at something strange, inexplicable, like a void of black, as a patch of his mind grew crazy and unfamiliar to the marching elephants that snacked on the brain-eels that cultishly laughed and soupishly smiled.
He stood up, holding the fork in his right hand. The dishes on his table jumped into the air, singing a stupid song. Then one split open, letting loose a sludge of soup onto a man wearing a monocle nearby.
"You mother-h. I hate - going to ki- go- God-, son of a b-", said something muffled behind the soup, stuttering the threats toward him. Quacking like a duck, and then walking away with crow's feet in his shoes.
Bob tried to find a word to say but rushed away instead just as a great sledgehammer smiled at the table and he heard a crack.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry", he said, stepping a bit faster than he was supposed to.
He tripped, he fell, and he crashed to the ground, slowly, as his head bounced against the solid concrete that warped and withered black and white, like a film, like a monkey with its fur being shaped strangely.
He groaned, wept, and grimaced at the sight of the people surrounding him.
"I'm fine!...", he cried, "I'm f… Fine! Fine!"
He could still speak and felt no pain at all, on the outside. On the inside, shame burnt through his chest. He tried to look away from the people around him and began to back away, crawling into the forest of shoes and socks.
He screamed!
A crack echoed from the iron door. He dropped the fork and felt a rush of pain enter his head and eyes until he fell into whirling darkness.
He saw that the people were not looking at him. They were looking at the hyena of many heads and faces and tongues, and he screamed, saw that they were God, with their many spoons, gifts from the heavens, and their wings, and their strange golden eyes, and the fog that was enveloping the earth, and killed his lungs until something pricked his hands…