19 January 2007

A variety of heads

The man was adept at injuring himself and today he decided to take it to the limit. He approached the huge engineer’s vice in his garage workshop, brushing back his hair. The vice jaws yawned open as he span the fat T-bar easily. Like bobbing for apples in a bowl he pressed his head down until his nose touched cold iron. Now he wound the bar slowly clockwise, feeling the first pressure on his temples. As he turned the bar hard, high-pitched singing screamed in his ears momentarily. A loud crack silenced the sound and his vision was suddenly blurred. He stood uncertainly and lurched onto his driveway and reached with horror to feel his shattered head. Waves of nausea flooded over him as he fumbled for thoughts, would anyone notice him now…
**********
His bed felt cold and the pillow hard as stone. Where were the red digits of his alarm clock? “Hypothermia on the rocks please…” he mumbled to no one through stiff lips. Tomorrow morning paramedics would melt his cheek from the frozen sidewalk and lift his stiff corpse. His very good friends would laugh when they remembered Saturday. How he had drunk a whole bottle of scotch through his fucking nose. His eyes had been bleeding as he staggered onto the sidewalk. “If I get tired I’ll just lay down.” He tapped the side of his nose confidentially at the lamppost.

**********
You would never guess this suited gent had just lost his job, his house, his family and his wealth. He was in control now that every sensitive word in the books on self-development had prepared him for his predicament. He knew he was in a good place in his head. Life would be sweet and fair to him because he had given more then he had to give. A red-nosed beggar muttered from the pavement. The suit found two coins in his pocket and pressed them wordlessly into the beggar’s brown hand. Now he turned sharply to cross the street. A bus ploughed into him and dragged him eighty yards along the road leaving a long thin red streak.

5 comments:

Grace said...

Wow, powerful stuff PV, are you going in for horror writing, its very Edgar Allan? Hope you are well xx

Gel said...

Good to see you writing again.
This man has been on an excruciating journey, worse than any pounding migraine.

The "suited" gent is gone, but his head is in the right place now, hopefully without headaches, despite the pain of needing to leave blood relatives far away.
Being "hit by a bus" perhaps woke him up to living fully, I hope. The world is open to him now.
Take care, PV
-GeL
www.ShadowsintheMoonlight.typepad.com

Perfect Virgo said...

Grace - ages ago I wrote something I called "The Pit and the Pendulum" so I am pleased to see you still see a Poe influence! I read your diary and like the results Grace.

GEL - thank you, yes even on a webcam those boys and girls seem worlds away. Inserting some genuine distance from them has been the sternest test of all and proves (if proof were ever needed) their vital importance.

{illyria} said...

wow, PV! i can relate with the theme. i wrote something back at my place that has to do with "red," too. were we reading each other's minds? :)

Grace said...

I am glad you still call in on me :-)

Drop me a line when you can?