Chain Link Fence Part 1, Chapter 2 (883 hits)
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Submitted by Tak (View user info) at 2004-01-10 15:33:13 EST
**I didn't think this would go over well, but due to the kind criticism I recieved from the first chapter, I've decided to pick up this three year old novel and try rewriting it. From here on out, what you see will have been rewritten from the original. Thanks for the inspiration Ubersite, and please, continue to offer your suggestions and critique. The help is appreciated.**
Part 1, Chapter 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/22616
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Chapter Two:
"Clanking"
".... I mean you never know right?"
He had taken his jacket off and it was now lying across the seat between him and Botch. "There are just some places," Clank now continued, "Some things, mind you, that the human mind either cannot grasp or just doesn't want to right? We hide things like that from ourselves.... and I don't know, it just seems to me that other people must see things in a completely different light than I do. I mean, what would happen if say, you were to be able to look through another person's eyes. Just for a second, just some off-the-street somebody." Clank pulled on the joint a little nervously and handed it back to Botch. Botch took it and started sucking it down like air, and the car moved forwards, as did Clanky's words.
"Maybe even somebody you don't even know, never met before, and you for some reason have the chance to view the world through their eyes, what would you see? Would everything appear different in their eyes? Would cars and people and all the other factors of the scene at which you are staring be made up of inter-looping shades of light and cells swirling past the speed of light? Of course the geometry and the actual build of the physical characters themselves would have to stay the same volume and basic shapes; that way one person doesn't walk into a thing another person sees differently, but still would it be anyway near to the way you see things? I doubt it, I do. I think that's all of our problem right there; we just take things for the way we see them, we don't actually give thought to all the possibilities. I don't know, maybe we're scared. Whaddaya think Botches my man?"
Clank accepted the joint from Botch, which was more a roach then anything now, and raised his eyebrows for his reply. Botch sat in the passenger seat, seeming to think very deeply about what Clank had said, and then grinned. He pointed out the window towards a sign triumphantly shouting that Mc' Donald's delivered over a million little patties of cow/soybean meat a day, and grinned even bigger.
"Cheeseburger. Hmm. Clanky lets get a cheeseburger," he said. Clank turned into the drive-in without even looking at Botch and sat behind a green Sedan, waiting.
"No matter how hard I try I can't seem to really understand another human being. It's weird, I make so much sense to myself." Clanky rolled down his window and spoke into the drive through intercom, again using his fake italian voice.
"Hey dere, how ya doin ma'am, I'm gonna want a numba three wid a Coke and another numba three wid a doctors pecker please and thank you." Botches busted out into another giggling spree at this, holding his stomach and leaning back and forth. The lady on the intercom came back and asked Clank to drive around.
They left the Mc'donalds and drove on to there small apartment in the lower section of St. Augustine, Florida. Clanky opened the front door and plopped down on the couch, switching on the television. He told Botch to get him a beer and join him. The two of them sat in front of the tube and drank beer with their fast food dinner, laughing exactly like the fake voices on sitcoms, only when needed, directly on cue. Clank stood and stretched after awhile, muting the television with the clicker.
"Hey Botch, you stay quiet while I'm on the phone now," he said as he picked up the receiver and punched buttons, "I gotta let Mr. Wigs know the deal's done."
The telephone rang and the connection was made. A voice floated softly through the air to Botch's ear and he watched the silent movie of the television avidly, as if he had never seen one before. He knew not to try and listen to Clanky's conversations. Hell yea he knew. He was a light headed man, and he knew it, but a beating will get through anyone's skull through repetition, and Botch had learned the hard way. So he sat and pretended not to be thoroughly intrigued by the words Clank now spoke into the ear of a man Botch had never actually met.
"Hey Wigsy, what's goin on old man?.......Yea, not too much........ha ha, Christ, Wigs you kill me......you got it, you got it........uh, yea," Now more serious, "Yea. Absolutely done. No strings..........yea.......allright well I was just lettin you know.......all right.......I'll be there Thursday....allright Wigs. Later, my man."
Clanky hung up the phone and strode to the refrigerator. He grabbed two beers and came back to the couch.
"Pop her open Botch, we got lotsa celebratin' to do. The boss is prouder'n hell of us. And he's got us another job already lined up."
Botch smiled at this and opened his beer, killing more than half of it in a gulp. He walked over to his black nylon backpack and opened it, bringing back two stacks of bills held together by rubber bands. He laid these on the coffee table in front of the couch and looked at Clank pleadingly.
"Count it Clank, count it."
Clank grabbed one stack and started ruffling bills before Botch stopped him with a hand. "Out loud, Clank," he said, and blushed a little. Clank started at the beginning.
"One hundred, two hundred, three hundred......."
He and Botch sat and drank the night away, watching TV and at first counting bills, and then just kind of tossing them around the room; Clank lighting cigarette after cigarette, trying his best to somehow find solace in this place with nowhere to run.
At one particular interval during the night Clank happened to find himself standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, staring blankly into his own eyes. He caught himself up with where he was and looked around. He looked down to his watch, he couldn't seem to remember how long he'd been in here,
(it's the beers shut up wussy you know damn well it ain't the booze)
and it took a few moments for him to realize that the hands on the face of his clock were standing still. Damn cheap watch, he thought and turned to leave the bathroom.
At first, upon returning to the living room, Clank didn't exactly notice anything wrong except the television making no noise and the picture not moving. Maybe it needed a little percussive maintenance. Botch sat on the couch staring at nothing, which was not all that uncommon. Clank strode over to the set and bashed it a few times, but nothing happened. His hand didn't even make a noise when it slammed against the back of the television, and he couldn't feel a trace of the impact in his wrist. It was as if he had almost hit the TV and an invisible barrier had stopped his hand with a soft push. He was beginning to think he must have gone deaf somehow when he heard himself whisper in a small voice- "Who's there?"
Something seemed lodged in his throat and he couldn't seem to draw breath
(kinda like petey musta felt eh, clanky)
anymore at the right speed through his windpipe. He glanced at Botch and realized for the first time that there were no eyes in the boys sockets. Just empty holes. The eyelids hung, damp laundry on the line, rustling back and forth in the breeze from the now open front door. A stale, humid wind had flung it wide, and now flew through the windows, spraying glass this way and that, trash and debris from the street coming in through the door and broken jagged teeth of the window panes, and Clank thought he even saw a tumbleweed - a real tumbleweed, right here in the fucking Sunshine State, bumbling it's way towards the house. Outside the threshold of the door there was nothing but darkness. No shade, no shadow, no light, no nothing. And Clank heard a Voice.
An opera of voices, a montage; a hectic choir of innumerable screams of pain bent into sighs of passion filled his ears, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up. It seemed to be emanating from inside his head, as if millions of very tiny people with millions of very annoying megaphone's were trapped in an overturned bus between his ears, screaming for help and moaning in lust. A piercing pinpoint of light was beginning to break through the darkness right outside the door, and Clank didn't need to keep watching to know what was going to happen. That light was going to swallow him whole. Eat him up, chew him up, and swallow him right on down the drainpipe, and there was nothing Clank could do to stop it. In vain he clamped the meat of his palms against his ears.
The pinpoint of light became a physical shape and reached its way to Clank's eyes. Maybe a half inch thick, and pointed at the end like an ice-pick, it came to within a quarter of an inch from his pupil, and he could feel it's coldness raking his eye, but could not make one move. He screamed then, and he didn't know for how long. When he opened his eyes again, the light, and the darkness shrouding it, sucked back out through the door as if through a vacuum, and the glass and trash and debris whisked up into the air and back outside. The windows fixed themselves back exactly as they always had been, like a video being rewound when it's still playing, and the television was coming in loud and clear now.
"Get outta the way, Clanky. I can't see the tube," Botch said.
He waved his arm in frantic circles. Clank looked around the room and blinked. He walked to the refrigerator and grabbed another beer. He plopped down on the couch and asked Botch what he was watching. On the television a man was being run over by a steamroller, and people were screaming.
"Real TV," Botch said, "It's a real cool show."
Clank laid his head back on the cushion and took a very large swallow of foaming beer that stung the hell out of the back of his throat and watered his eyes. He said it right out loud without even thinking.
"Yes, sir. Just another day in the life."
User Reviews
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-23 18:37:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm slow, but I'm catching up.
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2004-01-23 17:35:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yes loki, very happy now. I've been waiting for some regulars other than Phinch and Spike.
No offense Phinch and Spike. :)
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-23 17:09:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
HAHAHA christ is speechless.
Ok, I'm hooked, I hope you're happy now.
Submitted by Christ (user info) at 2004-01-11 00:28:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-01-10 19:17:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
cool deal, i'll be looking forward to it.
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2004-01-10 18:03:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Hey, thanks Phinch.
I promise it just gets better. But you know, this is rewrote from it's original, so that may have made some sort of difference in the style too.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-01-10 17:56:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked it better than the first.
Submitted by Crux (user info) at 2004-01-10 17:32:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This sounds like a teenager wrote it or something, but for some reason I kinda liked it.
Good job, keep 'em comin!