Recollections from my Tour of the Invisible World (Part III) (389 hits)
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Submitted by I_Shit_Liquid_Existence (View user info) at 2008-12-01 11:15:40 EST
Note: I know it's long, but god damn it, there's nothing better to read these days! I want some constructive comments, please! Besides, this part is really funny, I think.
III (of VI)
Proposed Hospital Reconstruction
"Commemorate Veteran's Day with this special offer from Papa Johns!" Oh my god. I left the television on when I fell asleep. I look at my surroundings: the television sits on top of an empty wooden dresser that I've had since I was a little kid, a half empty bottle of vodka is on top of the radiator that warms the head of my bed, I can see empty soda cans on every surface in my room, and in my sleepy state I curse my carelessness. What time is it anyway? I look at the clock, and the numerals are not... normal? I squint, rub my eyes, and look again. Nope. I'm still asleep.
The bus is moving fast now. The needle of the speedometer has passed the highest possible speed reading - but are we getting anywhere? An African tribesman covered in beads and gold jewelry, spear in one hand and microphone in the other, looks at me and says "Are you awake again? Sir, you must stay awake. If you fall asleep again, I surely do believe that you could die. Look at me. Do you know who you are? Who was the first president? Oh... your pupils are dilated and inconsistent. Look at me..."
What? Outside the pentagonal windows of the bus, I see that we have arrived in a hospital. Stretchers bearing the battered bodies of victims of car accidents, shootings, robberies, rapes, drugs, and other such horrible crimes and realities go whizzing by with an entourage of doctors and nurses. They are enormous piles of shredded and bloody humanity on wheels. I calculate that the man from the small sedan will not make it, as his arms seem to have far too much glass inside, and his eyes... where are his eyes? I calculate the rape victim will make it. She just has a few bruises here and there, but she's still screaming in blind hysteria. A combination of words that I never want to hear again assault my ears, like little invisible daggers, bleeding dry my capacity of sympathy. I can almost read the sound waves. Speech bubbles outlined by jagged edges, punctuated only with exclamation points, words in big bold all capitals the unabridged dictionaries will be adding next year, float before my eyes, and more flow from the crying speak holes of the anguished patients.
The man that got robbed was stabbed in the neck. I don't even know why they brought him to the hospital. Maybe the circus would have been better. He does this hilarious little routine where the blood spurts out in short bursts, painting the walls like he's some sort of Jackson Pollock wannabe. Why the hell am I here?
Inside the bus, my companions look out the pentagons of glass, taking pictures. I blink. African tribesman is a garbage man is a kid in a Halloween costume of the solar system with all the planets orbiting his head is a Greek warrior is a talking Greek salad is Mickey Mouse. Flash! Blue light reflects off of the pentagonal glass, bouncing in all directions within the bus, followed by click! Click! A very old African American lady next to me with long gray hair and a flower dress and a tiny tiny purse looks at me, looks out at the hospital, looks back at me, and says "Ah... Honey, you look terrible!" She takes my picture, and blue spots replace the awful words of the unfortunate speech bubbles. I blink.
Still at the hospital. Must be some sort of a bus stop. A man with a shot crotch is approaching fast on our side of the bus. I reach quickly for the latch on the space age curvy windows, to shut it. In my hurry to block the speech bubbles from entering the bus, I broke the window. Blink. Window is fine. The tour guide asks me if I need to get off, because you look like complete shit, sir, and I think it might be wise for you to check yourself into the operating room. I take Mickey Mouse by the hand, peel off his white gloves, and kiss the ruby ring that he apparently wears; then I look him in the eyes and say to him, in all sincerity, "I am fine. Do you see these hands of mine? See how they shine? Look at this my face of mine. See how I smile and gaze coherently at these wondrous surroundings? This is not the time, sir, for those butchers to reconfigure what I have only allowed God himself to shape. My liver... If I could see it right now, I bet it would be beaming with satisfaction. I will not go to the hospital today." I decide not to talk for the rest of the tour.
Mickey Mouse has a grim face of acceptance that tells me he knows the things he cannot change, and I let him go. I blink. The former president, Abraham Lincoln, takes off his top hat, wipes his forehead with a tissue from his pocket, and tells the bus driver that no longer exists to take an inventory of the tour group before continuing. Old Honest Abe pushes his thoughts of my condition to the back of his mind. I don't want to be a party pooper, you see, and I honestly don't think anything is wrong with me. My liver... must be smiling at this very moment: all safe and snug in there, warm and cozy, listening to the tunes of my perfect heart beat. My liver might be hanging out with my pancreas, or exchanging phone numbers with the lovely and luscious spleen. She's a wild one, of that I can be sure. No! My parts and I have signed a temporary ceasefire; they are enjoying the trip as much as I am. I don't need to go to this hospital, and I certainly don't want my words to become floating speech bubbles.
I look out the window, and I see a little boy with a butterfly net trying to catch the floating bubbles that are swooping down to the floor before soaring back up to the ceiling. His net has a nice amount of loot in there already. I can make out the sentences "just kill me now" and "we need some morphine STAT!" and "CLEAR!!!" I suppose his checkup went well. He has a sticker on his yellow smiley face t-shirt that says something or other about how he got a shot and didn't cry, and there's a lollypop dangling out of his mouth, bouncing around in places where the baby teeth have fallen out. I miss being that young. So carefree, unaware, blissfully ignorant of the terrible reality that's about to come, a reality that will one day push a button, process him, and seek to destroy him. Children are quite amazing creatures.
As these thoughts are flitting through my mile-a-minute brain, the bus driver that doesn't exist looks at a clipboard that doesn't exist, using a non-existent pencil to take attendance of the tour group. "We're missing somebody, Mister President. That eighty-three year old lady that was sitting next to that deranged man there with the long brown hair and tweed jacket has disappeared." I look to my right. She's gone, and only her camera remains.
I pick up the camera, totally disinterested in where this badly dressed old black lady has got off to, and I look through the pictures. I see pictures from a young child's birthday party: Mickey Mouse drawn in black, read, white, and yellow frosting, sitting on a gigantic cake, looks happily at the candles that are burning above him. In this moment of frozen time, I can almost make out the dread behind those cartoon eyes; dread that the burning candle wax will land on him and melt his mouse nuts off, or land on his eyes and burn them into useless bloody craters, or any number of horrifying possibilities. I just wish I could tell Mickey Mouse to abandon all hope, because, Mickey, even if you don't get melted, just look! You're surrounded by knives and slobbering children. Disgusted by the way we torture our cultural idols, I put the camera aside, and look up at the invisible, non-existent, immaterial, shapeless specter of the bus driver.
He is very distressed. "Concernicus" read his name tag. I look above the empty driver seat, and I can see a sign that boasts about the safety record of Invisible Inc.'s tour company: "Never ever lost a tourist yet, and we've been in service since the beginning of the universe!"
A young woman behind me with long red hair and a pretty fancy black skirt and other such pretty things that make it known to all that she is completely aware of how pretty she is addresses the bus driver: "That eighty-three year old woman... today is her birthday. I took her wallet while she was napping and it says on her driver's license that she needs prescription eye glasses, has access to handicap parking... Oh. Right, it's her birthday. She must have just turned eighty-four."
The tour guide Lincoln crosses her name off of the imaginary list on the imaginary clipboard that the bus driver I imagine is holding. With the microphone in hand, he says to us "Happy birthday ma'am, where ever you are. Remember folks! Invisible Inc. is not responsible for lost items on the tour..."
A shout from somebody in a seat in front of me rises above the chit chat and camera clicks, and I behold a man dressed in a heavily decorated navy uniform springing from his seat. I behold bullet holes that manifest themselves on parts of his body. The red juice starts to seep out from beneath his ironed and starchy clothing. To make a long story short: the bus driver that cannot be real opens the door and lets the man out as Lincoln, blink, my father crosses his name off of the list that cannot exist. A doctor in white robes (O! how they dress like wise old monks!) sees the marine get off the bus, and calls for a medic.
The marine screams, and the little boy nets the words "AHHHH!! OH FUCK. OH FUCK ME!!!" with an innocent smile on his face. His mother takes him by the arm, and leads him out of the hospital. Booster shots aren't fun, but as long as the little kid toys in the waiting room, or the butterfly nets in the ER hallways are available, it's not all bad. I can see a clear band-aid on one of his skinny little arms. He looks up at his mother, and his mother looks down at him. She says, "Oh my! Look at all the words you caught today! You're so smart!"
Setting him up for failure... Some people shouldn't have children.
The bus starts moving again. I feel a pain in my stomach, and we barrel through the walls of the hospital, running over the stretchers, crushing doctors and patients alike beneath the wheels. Goodbye hospital. I'm not going to lie: I'm not a fan. Not until there's free health care anyway. Maybe then it won't be such a chore for all those involved; you know, the people bleeding to death would be more likely to give you guys business, with a smile on their faces, if they didn't have to pay. We break through the final wall of the building, and here we are - back on the open road. Adventure! Amusement! The invisible world! Oh, what a strange and wonderful place, where the presence of God mingles with the presence of Satan, and the beings of the middle plane of existence are all as powerful as the greatest and the least! A world that knows no boundaries, where perception is only a tiny fraction of the experience of reality!
A nice tour. Too bad I'm probably dreaming. This bus is awesome. Blink. I have a yellow chair. Blink.... I have Hitler mustache. Blink. I shave. Blink. My toes are covered in corns and warts. Blink. Blink.
User Reviews
Submitted by awj002 (user info) at 2008-12-07 23:27:58 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
But, there I was
..... dick
Submitted by Linus (user info) at 2008-12-01 14:00:27 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
Didn't understand any of this.
Submitted by KirillovianShitStain (user info) at 2008-12-01 13:51:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Shit, you're right. I fucked that up.
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2008-12-01 13:32:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Another thing: your Naval soldier became a Marine in less than a paragraph.
I'm just being a stickler here and I know that the Marines were born of the Navy, but there are military personnel who would beat you for your ignorance/oversight.
And apologies to my mother, but I have to do this:
M-y
A-ss
R-ides
I-n
N-avy
E-quipment
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2008-12-01 13:20:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Here's the Family Guy clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtXlekAtbag
<shameless linkwhoring to follow>
Here's my example of making stream of consciousness flow: http://www.ubersite.com/m/89762
(just to toot my own horn)
(although, if I could "toot my own horn", I'd still be living at home with the parents)
Submitted by KirillovianShitStain (user info) at 2008-12-01 13:01:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Hmm... Can you refer me to a specific episode? I am not as well versed in the Family Guy area as most.
But I see what you mean, I think. The language needs work. And the flow... needs work. I'll work on it.
As a nifty side note, I wrote all six parts within a few hours while on Adderall on Veteran's Day. I cleaned it up a tiny bit, but didn't change anything big. I'll revise part IV before I post it, to fix up the language and flow. It's had to make the stream of consciousness flow.... That's odd.
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:51:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
If you would cut out the Seattle coffee-shop prose, this would be a good series.
There are parts of this that make me feel like I'm reading the lyrics from "Rocket Man", or worse, drift me to the vignette of Stewie Griffin doing a coffee-shop prose version of "Rocket Man".
The flow is still broken and choppy.
Submitted by sage104 (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:49:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
LOL, maybe it was a premonition.
What a fucking dumb ass though, seriously. And as evidenced by them embarrassing my team (the Redskins) yesterday...the Giants don't even need him.
"See you in my nightmares...but how did you get there?" ~Lil Wayne/Kanye West
Have some points. <3 :)
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:47:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I shit liquid existence?
That's just awesome.
Submitted by KirillovianShitStain (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:41:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Hahahaha. No. I wrote this before that dumb mother fucker shot himself.
Submitted by sage104 (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:29:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Dude...you saw Plaxico there at that hospital?
Submitted by KirillovianShitStain (user info) at 2008-12-01 12:26:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Sir, be more specific.
Submitted by SgtHartman (user info) at 2008-12-01 11:44:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
It says it's for dogs, but she can't read.
-- Homer Simpson
Simpson's Roasting on an Open Fire