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Creative Writings
The Iron Sheik vs the Sheik Parable
There worked an androgynous pharmacist on Clandestine street, where I knew to be off the highway. They told me he stocked something to alleviate my ailment. For all night long mysteries maddened me to the point I’d sleep against the heat of the sun and awaken for long nights of searching. Here lately, I wrestled with whom between the Sheik and the Iron Sheik was better.
Night three of sleeplessness, I drove seventy miles per hour to Clandestine at three o clock in the morning. Luckily, the pharmacy's lights were on and the open sign was facing the window. I pulled up to the low-roofed and wooden building, approached it, and opened its door. Rows read headaches, cold, flue, and diarrhea, but off hand I didn’t see my drug. Behind the counter, he wore long blonde locks and eye makeup, along with a purple shiny vest that exposed his hairy chest and muscular arms. He was the one I heard about.
“May, I help you,” he said, extending a smile of courtesy.
“Yes, I’m dreadfully curious,” I replied. “And most curious when I lay my head down. I no longer sleep.”
“Well” he smiled, “may I try to treat your trouble?”
I thought for a moment but knew I’d be silly to think a pharmacist could expose wrestling’s greatest secrecies. “It’s to do with a more cultish ado,” I admitted.
“Well, try me, for the other night a xe came in here, mattering the meaning of Melchizedek. I showed xem all things xey sought.”
His proficiency in pronouns progressed my interest in his ideas on my inquiries. “Do you watch the sport of pro wrestling?” I said.
“In moderation: yes. I especially respect their time in the gym. Once, I met Scott Steiner dead lifting next to me at the old Gold’s in Charlotte.”
“I suppose you’ve never seen the Iron Sheik or the Sheik.” I said.
He reached down under the counter and curled up a purple dumbbell. He continued curling. “Tell me about these Sheiks. Are they Muslim ministers?”
“On the contrary,” said I, “Because their faith, they’re vilified. The Sheik ordered around a woman in a burqa to burn incense while he prayed to Allah and was abhorred by audiences for it. The people were incensed at his incense, you could say. The Iron Sheik wore a turban just as the Sheik and infuriated fans with it.” I stopped myself, for to the casual fan this conversation was a foreign object across the face. I said, “forgive me for fathoming you or anyone could tell me all these things.”
“Now, give me a chance.” He said, “I’ve lit up the paths to many unknowns. For instance, did you know when read in full the LGBTQ acronym has a ‘~’ in it? It stands for one who identifies as a ze that is attracted to pianos played in G-flat chords.”
Again, the pharmacist’s education of the enigmatic built in me confidence to confide in him. I replied, “both the Sheik and Iron Sheik wear sharp toed wrestling boots that’s seen as giving them unfair advantages over their adversaries.”
“I suppose if these two had tussled before you wouldn’t be here. Did they ever compete in the same time and place?”
“Not that I can find. The Sheik came about in the late nineteen-forties and did everywhere but received fame in Canada, Michigan, Japan, Chicago. The Iron Sheik hit the scene in the nineteen-seventies and really hit it big in New York in the eighties.”
“Hm. So this first Sheik could be distinguished by being the original, the original Sheik.” He said with teeth white as the pictures on the crest packages at the end cap in front of him.
His white teeth and tanned skinned with sort of a girl’s smooth face must be part of how he charmed our sicknesses, I thought. But to his question I said, “I suppose so and, you know, in these matters contrast is much important as we determine who is better.”
“But,” he replied, “the prototype sometimes only serves as a frame for the true invention. Did this Iron Sheik improve on the original?”
“Well, they both did the camel clutch, and both submissions looked the same from where I sat.”
“Well, then we’ve reached sort of a wall, but remember ‘contrast.’ How did the Iron Sheik differ and did it improve on this original Sheik’s style.”
“The styles were different,” I said, rubbing my chin, “the original Sheik lay the foundation for hardcore, blinding Bobo Brazil with fire; the Iron Sheik grappled as an Olympian, spinning clubs over his head.”
“Then, who showed more success?”
“Hard to say,” I replied, “for at nights I roll around thinking that on one hand the Iron Sheik won the WWF Title, ending a six-year reign of Bob Backlund, while on the other hand, the original Sheik went undefeated in Toronto for well over one-hundred matches, even besting Andre the Giant.”
“Those are indeed tangible facts. What about the thing that awakened you and really brought you here, pure wander? What about them gives them such that it keeps you from resting that poor brain?”
“Well,” I said dumbfounded, “I don’t know. I do find the Iron Sheik to be such a talker that I think he’d of been fine as a manager in a non-PG environment long after being able to perform physically at a high level. Then there’s the original Sheik, there’s something about the mystique of his infamous riches that his name alone could boost a stable even without him in the territory, that he could bestow Ernie Roth with the name Abdullah Farouk. There’s something mythical about one bestowing a name on another talent and financing his stable, while that one wrestles in other territories." As I spoke those words my sentences became slower at the realization these two would be better pitted against not themselves but others more similar to either of the respective legends.
“Do you feel, at all, better.” The pharmacist said, squinting in curiosity.
“Strangely, ninety-five percent better.”
“Just one more question….”
“Yeah?”
“Suppose two American namesakes with traditional wrestling boots came about and they shared one move, would you feel the burden to compare them all night long, every night?”
I felt then, one-hundred percent healed and said, “I suppose not.” As my eyes began to tire, I said “you’ve medicated me with the tonic of the ear. You’ve healed me merely by listening to me. What is it I can pay you for this service?”
“Please, only give an equal dosing to another who may need to rest their head.”
Many nights of rest went by before I went back to the pharmacy. And I did go out with the mission to heal insomnia, in doing that I received more treatment for myself. Healing by the remedy of listening brought me to a place of zin, a place between God and medicine. I went back a year later to share this with the pharmacist, to share my faith. But when I turned onto Clandestine, no small wooden store with an androgynous pharmacist awaited my arrival. An empty lot for thinking stood in its place. As I parked my car and lay my head back to recall this person who I may or may not have met, I remembered these words of his: “the other night a xe came in here, mattering the meaning of Melchizedek. I showed xem all things xey sought.”
Of course! I thought, but I refused to overthink it.
Across from me a SUV with police getup pulled up. The officer stepped out and slowly walked over to me. “Are you lost, xe,” he said.
I replied, “no, not anymore...”
There worked an androgynous pharmacist on Clandestine street, where I knew to be off the highway. They told me he stocked something to alleviate my ailment. For all night long mysteries maddened me to the point I’d sleep against the heat of the sun and awaken for long nights of searching. Here lately, I wrestled with whom between the Sheik and the Iron Sheik was better.
Night three of sleeplessness, I drove seventy miles per hour to Clandestine at three o clock in the morning. Luckily, the pharmacy's lights were on and the open sign was facing the window. I pulled up to the low-roofed and wooden building, approached it, and opened its door. Rows read headaches, cold, flue, and diarrhea, but off hand I didn’t see my drug. Behind the counter, he wore long blonde locks and eye makeup, along with a purple shiny vest that exposed his hairy chest and muscular arms. He was the one I heard about.
“May, I help you,” he said, extending a smile of courtesy.
“Yes, I’m dreadfully curious,” I replied. “And most curious when I lay my head down. I no longer sleep.”
“Well” he smiled, “may I try to treat your trouble?”
I thought for a moment but knew I’d be silly to think a pharmacist could expose wrestling’s greatest secrecies. “It’s to do with a more cultish ado,” I admitted.
“Well, try me, for the other night a xe came in here, mattering the meaning of Melchizedek. I showed xem all things xey sought.”
His proficiency in pronouns progressed my interest in his ideas on my inquiries. “Do you watch the sport of pro wrestling?” I said.
“In moderation: yes. I especially respect their time in the gym. Once, I met Scott Steiner dead lifting next to me at the old Gold’s in Charlotte.”
“I suppose you’ve never seen the Iron Sheik or the Sheik.” I said.
He reached down under the counter and curled up a purple dumbbell. He continued curling. “Tell me about these Sheiks. Are they Muslim ministers?”
“On the contrary,” said I, “Because their faith, they’re vilified. The Sheik ordered around a woman in a burqa to burn incense while he prayed to Allah and was abhorred by audiences for it. The people were incensed at his incense, you could say. The Iron Sheik wore a turban just as the Sheik and infuriated fans with it.” I stopped myself, for to the casual fan this conversation was a foreign object across the face. I said, “forgive me for fathoming you or anyone could tell me all these things.”
“Now, give me a chance.” He said, “I’ve lit up the paths to many unknowns. For instance, did you know when read in full the LGBTQ acronym has a ‘~’ in it? It stands for one who identifies as a ze that is attracted to pianos played in G-flat chords.”
Again, the pharmacist’s education of the enigmatic built in me confidence to confide in him. I replied, “both the Sheik and Iron Sheik wear sharp toed wrestling boots that’s seen as giving them unfair advantages over their adversaries.”
“I suppose if these two had tussled before you wouldn’t be here. Did they ever compete in the same time and place?”
“Not that I can find. The Sheik came about in the late nineteen-forties and did everywhere but received fame in Canada, Michigan, Japan, Chicago. The Iron Sheik hit the scene in the nineteen-seventies and really hit it big in New York in the eighties.”
“Hm. So this first Sheik could be distinguished by being the original, the original Sheik.” He said with teeth white as the pictures on the crest packages at the end cap in front of him.
His white teeth and tanned skinned with sort of a girl’s smooth face must be part of how he charmed our sicknesses, I thought. But to his question I said, “I suppose so and, you know, in these matters contrast is much important as we determine who is better.”
“But,” he replied, “the prototype sometimes only serves as a frame for the true invention. Did this Iron Sheik improve on the original?”
“Well, they both did the camel clutch, and both submissions looked the same from where I sat.”
“Well, then we’ve reached sort of a wall, but remember ‘contrast.’ How did the Iron Sheik differ and did it improve on this original Sheik’s style.”
“The styles were different,” I said, rubbing my chin, “the original Sheik lay the foundation for hardcore, blinding Bobo Brazil with fire; the Iron Sheik grappled as an Olympian, spinning clubs over his head.”
“Then, who showed more success?”
“Hard to say,” I replied, “for at nights I roll around thinking that on one hand the Iron Sheik won the WWF Title, ending a six-year reign of Bob Backlund, while on the other hand, the original Sheik went undefeated in Toronto for well over one-hundred matches, even besting Andre the Giant.”
“Those are indeed tangible facts. What about the thing that awakened you and really brought you here, pure wander? What about them gives them such that it keeps you from resting that poor brain?”
“Well,” I said dumbfounded, “I don’t know. I do find the Iron Sheik to be such a talker that I think he’d of been fine as a manager in a non-PG environment long after being able to perform physically at a high level. Then there’s the original Sheik, there’s something about the mystique of his infamous riches that his name alone could boost a stable even without him in the territory, that he could bestow Ernie Roth with the name Abdullah Farouk. There’s something mythical about one bestowing a name on another talent and financing his stable, while that one wrestles in other territories." As I spoke those words my sentences became slower at the realization these two would be better pitted against not themselves but others more similar to either of the respective legends.
“Do you feel, at all, better.” The pharmacist said, squinting in curiosity.
“Strangely, ninety-five percent better.”
“Just one more question….”
“Yeah?”
“Suppose two American namesakes with traditional wrestling boots came about and they shared one move, would you feel the burden to compare them all night long, every night?”
I felt then, one-hundred percent healed and said, “I suppose not.” As my eyes began to tire, I said “you’ve medicated me with the tonic of the ear. You’ve healed me merely by listening to me. What is it I can pay you for this service?”
“Please, only give an equal dosing to another who may need to rest their head.”
Many nights of rest went by before I went back to the pharmacy. And I did go out with the mission to heal insomnia, in doing that I received more treatment for myself. Healing by the remedy of listening brought me to a place of zin, a place between God and medicine. I went back a year later to share this with the pharmacist, to share my faith. But when I turned onto Clandestine, no small wooden store with an androgynous pharmacist awaited my arrival. An empty lot for thinking stood in its place. As I parked my car and lay my head back to recall this person who I may or may not have met, I remembered these words of his: “the other night a xe came in here, mattering the meaning of Melchizedek. I showed xem all things xey sought.”
Of course! I thought, but I refused to overthink it.
Across from me a SUV with police getup pulled up. The officer stepped out and slowly walked over to me. “Are you lost, xe,” he said.
I replied, “no, not anymore...”
Creative Writings
To Make Dormant
As Joy stepped through the sliding glass back door, the stone patio demanded her to lift her big toes. While acclimating against its heat she inched forward, using the sides of her feet. She took a breath at the sun, and while it breathed back at her she didn’t feel wrong for breaking her mom’s rule. “Joy Hicks, how many times do I have to say it, put your sandals on before you go out!” But her mom was only a few hours in on a long shift at Mercy Hospital, while she was on summer break. Then, she stared ahead at the feet of grass that separated the wooden part of the patio from the tall brown flora of the prairie.
When her eyes fixed on a man’s meaty back placed underneath his long hair and summer hat; above his vintage, crude stool; and in front of his canvas which set on thin, natural wood, she made a half turn back to the glass door. Her mother may look the other way at the little rules like sandals must go on before going outdoors, but she meant business when she said, “only talk to Herb if it’s an emergency. His ideas are miles of evil away from God, and just ‘not good’.” She’d say “not good” sometimes and “unhealthy” other times.
Through the glass, Joy saw her father’s summer hat and beard turn at her. “He’s not well,” she heard her mother’s voice say while he stood up.
“Hey!” He cried standing in his shorts and sandals. He looked pale in the outdoors and appeared about as unnatural with the prairie as a backdrop as a polar bear would. “Come here. I want to show you something! Come on, I could die of loneliness!”
What more could be an emergency than death itself? She embraced the air and walked to her father. As she got close to him, she saw her own blue eyes from his pale face looking back at her, and she saw her own curls, though her mom had straightened her long, blonde locks.
She felt he’d gotten shorter or she’d been growing faster. But he didn’t say anything about that.
“This ecosystem has become dormant,” he said. “Not dead but dormant,” he clarified with the brown tall plants behind him.
They turned their attention to the canvas with strokes that’d begun mirroring the meadow in its current state. After some seconds of silence, the man her mother told her to call Herb broke it, saying “your mother’s a level three RN, she could be making more money in California or somewhere, you know. But she always said she can’t leave the prairies of Minnesota behind.”
Joy thought for a moment. It’d been awhile since being forced to communicate with Herb, but she felt obliged to offer something. She said, “mother also says Minnesota is still only a drop of the Heaven that awaits us.”
“Really? What does your mother tell you about Heaven?”
Joy took a moment but only could muster the most recent times her mother made her cry. She recalled asking her mom if their family would still be together, but her mom told her they’d all be like angels in a choir but no longer a family. She said in Heaven things were different and praising God would be the only thing that’d matter. What’s worse when she asked her mom if Herb would go, her mom would say “Herb?” It’s what her mom didn’t say that told her Herb couldn’t go. She’d answer the yes or no question with, “God has a plan for everyone. Or only God knows the heart.”
“She says things will be different.” Joy replied.
“Is that what you want?” Herb said.
“No, I want things to always be the same.”
“Heaven, painting, looking at ecosystems. It is all the same.” Herb said.
“What do you mean? Heaven is better than everything. And painting is something you learn. Looking at plants is just something—something anybody can do.”
“Why though do we imagine and learn and observe? What are we really trying to get our minds from?”
Joy thought about it but didn’t know what to say.
“From the time of your—Say, what’s your mother told you about that—birth?”
“She said it hurts more than anything I can ever think of. But once the doctor handed me to her and she saw me, she knew it was a miracle.”
“That’s what she told you, huh?” With just a sentence Herb seemed to lose interest. He sat back down and transferred a few more strokes of the of acrylic paint from the brush to the easel, creating shapes yet to form anything.
“You don’t believe her? Then, what's birth like?” Joy said with her shoulders back and her nose in the air. She said it in a tone that asked, “you got any better ideas?”
“I was there,” Herb responded. “No lights in the room. Strange faces of nurses and doctors in and out. The water breaks, then at first that pain—that pain you’ve only heard about cuts at your wife. First you joke with her, first she tries to keep a tough face. Then, you try standing and she stands in your arms. Then, you try different positions. The nurse asks, ‘is everything alright?’ How is it?’ She knows it’s not alright. There are pictures on the wall of pain at all its intensities from zero to ten, and you know your wife is at a fifteen. Then she cries, and the room is darker. From the shadows, her mother says a prayer over her. Finally, that which she’s been fighting to withhold emerges in screams, in curses, in angers, until her mother puts a towel in her mouth. Her mother prays. Still she cusses God, and her mother slaps her. She says she can’t go on... Joking no longer helps, standing up no longer helps, praying no longer helps. And it’s the wee hours of the morning. You haven’t slept, and your mind is going…Your wife is no longer a human speaking; for her eyes have stopped answering you back. She’s pain incarnated. Her mother is screaming over her and covering her mouth. It’s a freakin’ exorcism!”
“But what about the part where the little baby comes out, and the doctor hands you her.” Joy said.
“That’s the worst part. You see, I did something that day in ignorance. I had the internet. God, I could have googled it, but I just made a spur of the moment decision. When the doctor asked, I told her yes—” Herb’s stare was a blank canvas. “He went on. I told them, ahead of time, I’d cut the cord. I thought it’d be like a small hose or something. But when you came out, it extended from your mother to your naval several feet in the air. Purple and fleshy, it had veins, and blood on it. At the top of it you squirmed around and clawed at the air like a beast. Why then did you make a sound? The entire time your head was emerging, everything was silent but the sound of the doctor coaching your mother to push at the two-minute interval of every contraction and your mother yelling when pushing. But when you and that purple evil shot out it happened like lightening, and then you squealed and squealed over us and clawed at the air with your fingers and toes. You scratched at your own flesh. Then, they ordered me to cut it like we planned. I hadn’t slept and had endured contraction after contraction. Under that influence, I took the scissors off that bed of sharp tools that would be needed to repair a human after all the horrors. I took the scissors and cut some point after the clamp. When I did, the darkest red blood you’ll ever see in a lifetime poured from its opening.”
“Ewe, gross! What’s your point?”
“Well, the point is…That day we (me and your mother) not only gave life, but we gave death. You see, all things that are born must die. You’re not unincluded. While this horrific ritual of childbirth is seen as the joy of the recent future, maybe, more accurately, it symbolizes the inevitable that we humans keep cycling ourselves into."
Joy's eyes watered; she looked away.
After a moment's hesitation Herb said, "now, not to change the subject, but from my room I’ve heard your mother tell you not to come out here with your feet exposed. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Joy wept, sorry she’d disobeyed her mother, as Herb went on contemplating how he could paint the story of the prairie that was once energized through photosynthesis but was now made dry and dormant through drought.
As Joy stepped through the sliding glass back door, the stone patio demanded her to lift her big toes. While acclimating against its heat she inched forward, using the sides of her feet. She took a breath at the sun, and while it breathed back at her she didn’t feel wrong for breaking her mom’s rule. “Joy Hicks, how many times do I have to say it, put your sandals on before you go out!” But her mom was only a few hours in on a long shift at Mercy Hospital, while she was on summer break. Then, she stared ahead at the feet of grass that separated the wooden part of the patio from the tall brown flora of the prairie.
When her eyes fixed on a man’s meaty back placed underneath his long hair and summer hat; above his vintage, crude stool; and in front of his canvas which set on thin, natural wood, she made a half turn back to the glass door. Her mother may look the other way at the little rules like sandals must go on before going outdoors, but she meant business when she said, “only talk to Herb if it’s an emergency. His ideas are miles of evil away from God, and just ‘not good’.” She’d say “not good” sometimes and “unhealthy” other times.
Through the glass, Joy saw her father’s summer hat and beard turn at her. “He’s not well,” she heard her mother’s voice say while he stood up.
“Hey!” He cried standing in his shorts and sandals. He looked pale in the outdoors and appeared about as unnatural with the prairie as a backdrop as a polar bear would. “Come here. I want to show you something! Come on, I could die of loneliness!”
What more could be an emergency than death itself? She embraced the air and walked to her father. As she got close to him, she saw her own blue eyes from his pale face looking back at her, and she saw her own curls, though her mom had straightened her long, blonde locks.
She felt he’d gotten shorter or she’d been growing faster. But he didn’t say anything about that.
“This ecosystem has become dormant,” he said. “Not dead but dormant,” he clarified with the brown tall plants behind him.
They turned their attention to the canvas with strokes that’d begun mirroring the meadow in its current state. After some seconds of silence, the man her mother told her to call Herb broke it, saying “your mother’s a level three RN, she could be making more money in California or somewhere, you know. But she always said she can’t leave the prairies of Minnesota behind.”
Joy thought for a moment. It’d been awhile since being forced to communicate with Herb, but she felt obliged to offer something. She said, “mother also says Minnesota is still only a drop of the Heaven that awaits us.”
“Really? What does your mother tell you about Heaven?”
Joy took a moment but only could muster the most recent times her mother made her cry. She recalled asking her mom if their family would still be together, but her mom told her they’d all be like angels in a choir but no longer a family. She said in Heaven things were different and praising God would be the only thing that’d matter. What’s worse when she asked her mom if Herb would go, her mom would say “Herb?” It’s what her mom didn’t say that told her Herb couldn’t go. She’d answer the yes or no question with, “God has a plan for everyone. Or only God knows the heart.”
“She says things will be different.” Joy replied.
“Is that what you want?” Herb said.
“No, I want things to always be the same.”
“Heaven, painting, looking at ecosystems. It is all the same.” Herb said.
“What do you mean? Heaven is better than everything. And painting is something you learn. Looking at plants is just something—something anybody can do.”
“Why though do we imagine and learn and observe? What are we really trying to get our minds from?”
Joy thought about it but didn’t know what to say.
“From the time of your—Say, what’s your mother told you about that—birth?”
“She said it hurts more than anything I can ever think of. But once the doctor handed me to her and she saw me, she knew it was a miracle.”
“That’s what she told you, huh?” With just a sentence Herb seemed to lose interest. He sat back down and transferred a few more strokes of the of acrylic paint from the brush to the easel, creating shapes yet to form anything.
“You don’t believe her? Then, what's birth like?” Joy said with her shoulders back and her nose in the air. She said it in a tone that asked, “you got any better ideas?”
“I was there,” Herb responded. “No lights in the room. Strange faces of nurses and doctors in and out. The water breaks, then at first that pain—that pain you’ve only heard about cuts at your wife. First you joke with her, first she tries to keep a tough face. Then, you try standing and she stands in your arms. Then, you try different positions. The nurse asks, ‘is everything alright?’ How is it?’ She knows it’s not alright. There are pictures on the wall of pain at all its intensities from zero to ten, and you know your wife is at a fifteen. Then she cries, and the room is darker. From the shadows, her mother says a prayer over her. Finally, that which she’s been fighting to withhold emerges in screams, in curses, in angers, until her mother puts a towel in her mouth. Her mother prays. Still she cusses God, and her mother slaps her. She says she can’t go on... Joking no longer helps, standing up no longer helps, praying no longer helps. And it’s the wee hours of the morning. You haven’t slept, and your mind is going…Your wife is no longer a human speaking; for her eyes have stopped answering you back. She’s pain incarnated. Her mother is screaming over her and covering her mouth. It’s a freakin’ exorcism!”
“But what about the part where the little baby comes out, and the doctor hands you her.” Joy said.
“That’s the worst part. You see, I did something that day in ignorance. I had the internet. God, I could have googled it, but I just made a spur of the moment decision. When the doctor asked, I told her yes—” Herb’s stare was a blank canvas. “He went on. I told them, ahead of time, I’d cut the cord. I thought it’d be like a small hose or something. But when you came out, it extended from your mother to your naval several feet in the air. Purple and fleshy, it had veins, and blood on it. At the top of it you squirmed around and clawed at the air like a beast. Why then did you make a sound? The entire time your head was emerging, everything was silent but the sound of the doctor coaching your mother to push at the two-minute interval of every contraction and your mother yelling when pushing. But when you and that purple evil shot out it happened like lightening, and then you squealed and squealed over us and clawed at the air with your fingers and toes. You scratched at your own flesh. Then, they ordered me to cut it like we planned. I hadn’t slept and had endured contraction after contraction. Under that influence, I took the scissors off that bed of sharp tools that would be needed to repair a human after all the horrors. I took the scissors and cut some point after the clamp. When I did, the darkest red blood you’ll ever see in a lifetime poured from its opening.”
“Ewe, gross! What’s your point?”
“Well, the point is…That day we (me and your mother) not only gave life, but we gave death. You see, all things that are born must die. You’re not unincluded. While this horrific ritual of childbirth is seen as the joy of the recent future, maybe, more accurately, it symbolizes the inevitable that we humans keep cycling ourselves into."
Joy's eyes watered; she looked away.
After a moment's hesitation Herb said, "now, not to change the subject, but from my room I’ve heard your mother tell you not to come out here with your feet exposed. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Joy wept, sorry she’d disobeyed her mother, as Herb went on contemplating how he could paint the story of the prairie that was once energized through photosynthesis but was now made dry and dormant through drought.
What are you drinking about right now?
Creative Writings
Here's a place to post and comment on creative writing... You're welcome to do either. I will confine my writings to this, going forward.
The Shape of Iniquity
Act I
“A person who takes the shape of something else entirely is not a person; it is a thing,” Marlon Bottoms said, sounding his famous monologue in front of the Goodman Theatre. He turned from the audience and turned back again a foot and a half shorter. They gasped and murmured as the six foot two, chunky, clean-shaven, suit wearing man now trolled about the Masonite hardboard floor wearing skin yellow as sickness and bushy hair and eyebrows like a cave man and black lips like ink running from a busted pen.
His voice stayed close to Marlon’s but took on the mood of naivety mixed with pain that matched his eyes. “Hi, my name’s Orrick and this day was a bit different than some others in that something special happened to me at school but just the same as the others in that I just got home from school to see my Memmi.” He, then, humping over as if he carried a back pack, pushed back an imaginary door and made the clicking sound of its closing. “Memmi, I want to read the Bible. The preacher in the school chapel says God likes it. He said we can be like the angels. Today, they even did an alter call, and, Memmi, I just wanted to go up there—up there right next to Emmy in her shiny white choir robe and hold her hand and squeeze all the love right out of it!”
Marlon kept some masculinity in his voice but took on Memmi’s form when he turned right and grew a long tail and long grey hair, and then scolded with a hovering presence, “What’d I tell you about love, Orrick!”
Marlon turned left and became the child again and coward a few steps back. “You said it’s our weakest instinct.”
Marlon felt, coming from the theatre’s darkness, the crowd leaning in with wonder Then, Marlon was the mother saying, “And what does that mean?”
Then he was the young, shamed monster saying, “that I shouldn’t care what anybody thinks about me…”
Next, he morphed back into Memmi, saying, “So what are you going to never, ever do, Orrick?”
“Hold Emmy’s hand. Read the Bible. Pray.”
Finally, Marlon, as the mother cried, “now go get me some human to eat. I’m hungry for thighs!”
Act II
Marlon turned from the audience again and back towards them. He stood once more as the narrator. With not a hair un-gelled from the first act, he embraced the audience, once more. With hands folded behind his back, he said, “Young Orrick did read the Bible, though. And when he did, he learned of the human kind, too. He learned them to be born in sin and shaped into iniquity. In Norwich, Connecticut this scripture couldn’t be truer than it was for one Detective Jude Hawkeye. “
At what Marlon did next, the dark theatre responded with a second of silence that comes with a collective adjustment of the eyes to a new perception. And then the half of those seated who first grasped what they saw with “oohs and ahs” awakened the others. For what was seen was Marlon’s body narrowing, his three-piece suit turning to a long navy coat, his slick hair lightening in color and growing to a long unkept greasy look. And, alas, they saw without him turning from them, his face tanning, his nose widening, and a beard growing from his face!
He stepped forward in the light of the painted black stage. “Hello, all,” the man said with Marlon’s protraction but using another man’s deeper, slower Mid-Western plain way of speaking and using that man’s very soul. Marlon bellowed, “I’m Detective Jude Hawkeye, and this is Nineteen Ninety-Seven Norwich, the headquarters of gun manufacturer Wrangler and Rich. I just made the drive on my own dime from Chicago to here, seeking to avenge a series of murders and cannibalisms in my city. I’m chasing leads my department would never promote—leads as a skeptic, I never thought I would...
Without a backdrop of an elevator on stage, to the audience Marlon breathed life to the scene of Jude going up the sky scraper. He traced his finger up and down the many choices of floors and found his selection at the top. He pressed the air, as if it were a button. While looking down with his long hair opening to expose enough face to show a look as serious as a family income, he used his voice to create the sound cables make to lift the elevator. He made a ding as some passersby got off. He stepped aside for the invisible individuals and made another ding as the doors closed to allow him to continue his ascent. When Jude reached his selected floor, he moved through without struggle, as if he were the last person on.
When walking through the doors, he talked to the audience again. “Before I detail my visit with Harvey Whitman, CEO of Wrangler and Rich, I’m bound to uncover the lead that got me here. It kind of started coming to a head back in Chicago at the Hotel Monica when myself and a Broadway actress who I met at the ‘FM 98’ radio station had a conversation on the balcony over the view of Lake Michigan. He made a careful step forward and stood quietly while creating the sounds of waves and of wind with his mouth.
“You need a coat…” He said.
Then Marlon side stepped, shrunk three inches, and turned from being Jude to be a short haired blonde with luscious eyes and lips that looked up where Jude had been standing. With every trace of a woman but only with Marlon’s voice, she said “I like to feel the wind for everything it has.” They paused for a moment with only the sound of weather and water, coming from her mouth. The woman folded her arms to the cold. “So, if you think Sam Hansen is such a lunatic, then why did you come on his station?”
Marlon sidestepped to the left and he was, again, Jude watching over the lake. He looked ahead but let a smile for her betray the hardness of his shell. “To tell you the truth I didn’t know him, not a damn thing about him. I just wanted to get this case out. If I knew he just wanted to promote conspiracy theories—Kristina, what I want to know is how a such a talented, artistic person like you got mixed in with all his conspiracy theories!”
With a slide to the right from Marlon, Kristina looked at Jude with her blue eyes. “Don’t act like you know me. Don’t act like you know—every darn thing, either!”
“C’mon!” Marlon said as Jude facing where Kristina would be standing. He made fun of Sam with a Texan accent, “My name's Sam Hansen and let me tell you folks what’s happening here. The shapeshifters have infiltrated the city of Chicago. That’s why we got this crime rate! That’s why we got people shooting each other for no reason! That’s why we have these people eating each other!”
And as Kristina, Marlon said to the now invisible Jude. “You have any better ideas, Detective?” She smiled with eyes looking tired and traced her finger down what would be Jude’s upper torso.
As Jude, Marlon turned ahead and pulled out an invisible cigarette and put on a struggle against the wind to light it. It felt like his fight against where the facts led him. He put his arm around the air that was now Kristina. “That Sam guy yells like a crazy man, makes up crazy horseshit. Don’t you think he just wants attention... That's why you go on about him so fuckin’ much! He’s like you. You have to have an audience, to feel accepted…”
As Kristina, Marlon pushed Jude off. “I keep telling you. You don’t damn well know me!” She pulled the imaginary doors apart and walked from the balcony to the room.
As Jude, Marlon went about smoking, saying “I guess it’s better to walk off the balcony from that end… And Kristina was right. I didn’t know her. But she didn’t know me either. During our fling, she accused me of having an easy life. Fuck her! I was raised by alcoholics and didn’t do school social events when I grew up. Except that one time. My first girlfriend, Becky Sands, talked me into attendin’ one of the basketball games, our team, the Jaguars played. This tall clean point guard for our team, Joel Conner, made the steal, dribbled the ball down the court, made the pass that led to our team winning.
Ha! “Our team.” Other than that night, I don’t know or give a fuck about how the Jaguars did. I just remember her saying,” and Marlon’s voice went to a high-pitched teen girl. “Oh, look at Joel’s dad out there hugging him. Why don’t you play sports like Joel, Jude?”
When she tried hugging me, I grabbed her wrists to refrain her. She told everybody I squeezed her, that I hurt her. I knew what my dad smelled like when he came home, the nonsense that came out his mouth. I knew I’d never be fuckin’ Joel.
And things didn’t get better with me and Kristina or me and any other woman than they did with Becky. Fuckin’ Kristina said I didn’t know her. Damn right, I didn’t know what a conspiracy theorist she was; that she was a member of the goddamn NRA, or that she was a republican that wanted to impeach the President. But she always carried that dramatic tone with dramatic words—that tone and those empty words. Marlon’s voice went from Jude’s to that of Kristina as he mocked her, saying “to assume the intent of another’s heart is to admit the shortcomings of yours. You’re insecure, Jude. Just go. Go make yourself a hero!”
“Jude” looked at the audience while tapping his invisible cigarette against the invisible rails of the balcony. He turned about and stepped forward on stage, presumably towards Harvey Whitman’s office. “Now, you can imagine I’m a man with an ego, but one thing bigger is this: facts. I wouldn’t be good at what I do, if I didn’t follow them. There was a series of cannibalisms in my city. One survivor testified of being chased by two things with ski masks and pepper spray in Chinatown outside Walgreens at 3:00 am. This strong Korean lady got away with all her flesh but some of her upper arm she lost to a bite. She had hairs from her attackers left on her. Forensic tests showed these hairs didn’t belong to human or animals known to us. The bite, also, was other worldly they said. But we found surveillance from a supermarket of humans, a mom and son, in trench coats buying the masks and the pepper spray.
The Korean woman said she saw what looked like yellow skin. These cannibals are mother and son, sophisticated but animalistic, mankind but beasts? Long after Kristina left, her theories stayed with me and so did her contacts. One contact being Mr. Whitman and one theory being that of a secret bullet manufactured at Wrangler and Rich, a bullet made just to undo shape shifters.
To Be Continued
The Shape of Iniquity
Act I
“A person who takes the shape of something else entirely is not a person; it is a thing,” Marlon Bottoms said, sounding his famous monologue in front of the Goodman Theatre. He turned from the audience and turned back again a foot and a half shorter. They gasped and murmured as the six foot two, chunky, clean-shaven, suit wearing man now trolled about the Masonite hardboard floor wearing skin yellow as sickness and bushy hair and eyebrows like a cave man and black lips like ink running from a busted pen.
His voice stayed close to Marlon’s but took on the mood of naivety mixed with pain that matched his eyes. “Hi, my name’s Orrick and this day was a bit different than some others in that something special happened to me at school but just the same as the others in that I just got home from school to see my Memmi.” He, then, humping over as if he carried a back pack, pushed back an imaginary door and made the clicking sound of its closing. “Memmi, I want to read the Bible. The preacher in the school chapel says God likes it. He said we can be like the angels. Today, they even did an alter call, and, Memmi, I just wanted to go up there—up there right next to Emmy in her shiny white choir robe and hold her hand and squeeze all the love right out of it!”
Marlon kept some masculinity in his voice but took on Memmi’s form when he turned right and grew a long tail and long grey hair, and then scolded with a hovering presence, “What’d I tell you about love, Orrick!”
Marlon turned left and became the child again and coward a few steps back. “You said it’s our weakest instinct.”
Marlon felt, coming from the theatre’s darkness, the crowd leaning in with wonder Then, Marlon was the mother saying, “And what does that mean?”
Then he was the young, shamed monster saying, “that I shouldn’t care what anybody thinks about me…”
Next, he morphed back into Memmi, saying, “So what are you going to never, ever do, Orrick?”
“Hold Emmy’s hand. Read the Bible. Pray.”
Finally, Marlon, as the mother cried, “now go get me some human to eat. I’m hungry for thighs!”
Act II
Marlon turned from the audience again and back towards them. He stood once more as the narrator. With not a hair un-gelled from the first act, he embraced the audience, once more. With hands folded behind his back, he said, “Young Orrick did read the Bible, though. And when he did, he learned of the human kind, too. He learned them to be born in sin and shaped into iniquity. In Norwich, Connecticut this scripture couldn’t be truer than it was for one Detective Jude Hawkeye. “
At what Marlon did next, the dark theatre responded with a second of silence that comes with a collective adjustment of the eyes to a new perception. And then the half of those seated who first grasped what they saw with “oohs and ahs” awakened the others. For what was seen was Marlon’s body narrowing, his three-piece suit turning to a long navy coat, his slick hair lightening in color and growing to a long unkept greasy look. And, alas, they saw without him turning from them, his face tanning, his nose widening, and a beard growing from his face!
He stepped forward in the light of the painted black stage. “Hello, all,” the man said with Marlon’s protraction but using another man’s deeper, slower Mid-Western plain way of speaking and using that man’s very soul. Marlon bellowed, “I’m Detective Jude Hawkeye, and this is Nineteen Ninety-Seven Norwich, the headquarters of gun manufacturer Wrangler and Rich. I just made the drive on my own dime from Chicago to here, seeking to avenge a series of murders and cannibalisms in my city. I’m chasing leads my department would never promote—leads as a skeptic, I never thought I would...
Without a backdrop of an elevator on stage, to the audience Marlon breathed life to the scene of Jude going up the sky scraper. He traced his finger up and down the many choices of floors and found his selection at the top. He pressed the air, as if it were a button. While looking down with his long hair opening to expose enough face to show a look as serious as a family income, he used his voice to create the sound cables make to lift the elevator. He made a ding as some passersby got off. He stepped aside for the invisible individuals and made another ding as the doors closed to allow him to continue his ascent. When Jude reached his selected floor, he moved through without struggle, as if he were the last person on.
When walking through the doors, he talked to the audience again. “Before I detail my visit with Harvey Whitman, CEO of Wrangler and Rich, I’m bound to uncover the lead that got me here. It kind of started coming to a head back in Chicago at the Hotel Monica when myself and a Broadway actress who I met at the ‘FM 98’ radio station had a conversation on the balcony over the view of Lake Michigan. He made a careful step forward and stood quietly while creating the sounds of waves and of wind with his mouth.
“You need a coat…” He said.
Then Marlon side stepped, shrunk three inches, and turned from being Jude to be a short haired blonde with luscious eyes and lips that looked up where Jude had been standing. With every trace of a woman but only with Marlon’s voice, she said “I like to feel the wind for everything it has.” They paused for a moment with only the sound of weather and water, coming from her mouth. The woman folded her arms to the cold. “So, if you think Sam Hansen is such a lunatic, then why did you come on his station?”
Marlon sidestepped to the left and he was, again, Jude watching over the lake. He looked ahead but let a smile for her betray the hardness of his shell. “To tell you the truth I didn’t know him, not a damn thing about him. I just wanted to get this case out. If I knew he just wanted to promote conspiracy theories—Kristina, what I want to know is how a such a talented, artistic person like you got mixed in with all his conspiracy theories!”
With a slide to the right from Marlon, Kristina looked at Jude with her blue eyes. “Don’t act like you know me. Don’t act like you know—every darn thing, either!”
“C’mon!” Marlon said as Jude facing where Kristina would be standing. He made fun of Sam with a Texan accent, “My name's Sam Hansen and let me tell you folks what’s happening here. The shapeshifters have infiltrated the city of Chicago. That’s why we got this crime rate! That’s why we got people shooting each other for no reason! That’s why we have these people eating each other!”
And as Kristina, Marlon said to the now invisible Jude. “You have any better ideas, Detective?” She smiled with eyes looking tired and traced her finger down what would be Jude’s upper torso.
As Jude, Marlon turned ahead and pulled out an invisible cigarette and put on a struggle against the wind to light it. It felt like his fight against where the facts led him. He put his arm around the air that was now Kristina. “That Sam guy yells like a crazy man, makes up crazy horseshit. Don’t you think he just wants attention... That's why you go on about him so fuckin’ much! He’s like you. You have to have an audience, to feel accepted…”
As Kristina, Marlon pushed Jude off. “I keep telling you. You don’t damn well know me!” She pulled the imaginary doors apart and walked from the balcony to the room.
As Jude, Marlon went about smoking, saying “I guess it’s better to walk off the balcony from that end… And Kristina was right. I didn’t know her. But she didn’t know me either. During our fling, she accused me of having an easy life. Fuck her! I was raised by alcoholics and didn’t do school social events when I grew up. Except that one time. My first girlfriend, Becky Sands, talked me into attendin’ one of the basketball games, our team, the Jaguars played. This tall clean point guard for our team, Joel Conner, made the steal, dribbled the ball down the court, made the pass that led to our team winning.
Ha! “Our team.” Other than that night, I don’t know or give a fuck about how the Jaguars did. I just remember her saying,” and Marlon’s voice went to a high-pitched teen girl. “Oh, look at Joel’s dad out there hugging him. Why don’t you play sports like Joel, Jude?”
When she tried hugging me, I grabbed her wrists to refrain her. She told everybody I squeezed her, that I hurt her. I knew what my dad smelled like when he came home, the nonsense that came out his mouth. I knew I’d never be fuckin’ Joel.
And things didn’t get better with me and Kristina or me and any other woman than they did with Becky. Fuckin’ Kristina said I didn’t know her. Damn right, I didn’t know what a conspiracy theorist she was; that she was a member of the goddamn NRA, or that she was a republican that wanted to impeach the President. But she always carried that dramatic tone with dramatic words—that tone and those empty words. Marlon’s voice went from Jude’s to that of Kristina as he mocked her, saying “to assume the intent of another’s heart is to admit the shortcomings of yours. You’re insecure, Jude. Just go. Go make yourself a hero!”
“Jude” looked at the audience while tapping his invisible cigarette against the invisible rails of the balcony. He turned about and stepped forward on stage, presumably towards Harvey Whitman’s office. “Now, you can imagine I’m a man with an ego, but one thing bigger is this: facts. I wouldn’t be good at what I do, if I didn’t follow them. There was a series of cannibalisms in my city. One survivor testified of being chased by two things with ski masks and pepper spray in Chinatown outside Walgreens at 3:00 am. This strong Korean lady got away with all her flesh but some of her upper arm she lost to a bite. She had hairs from her attackers left on her. Forensic tests showed these hairs didn’t belong to human or animals known to us. The bite, also, was other worldly they said. But we found surveillance from a supermarket of humans, a mom and son, in trench coats buying the masks and the pepper spray.
The Korean woman said she saw what looked like yellow skin. These cannibals are mother and son, sophisticated but animalistic, mankind but beasts? Long after Kristina left, her theories stayed with me and so did her contacts. One contact being Mr. Whitman and one theory being that of a secret bullet manufactured at Wrangler and Rich, a bullet made just to undo shape shifters.
To Be Continued
Ladies and Gentlemen,Time Limit Has Expired
Until The Last Drop
you know there's even a word in Spanish to describe drunken guilt? In English I know no such word. But still I describe it in its coler, smell, taste, and feeling
What are you drinking about right now?
I love alchohol with everything in my body...and I can't stop drinking...I wrote a creative piece in the creative thread called "Until the Last Drop" and it's really close to home..I don't expect to cure myself or anyone else with it but I hope an alchoholic can read it and feel understood.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
