Fools

Listen, you fools, and heed me well. Your insipid "blog" ramblings are sticking in my craw. I find one egregious ostentatious addition trite and, well, un-needed. This addition of which I speak is, well, easy to find. Chances are that any want-to-be snarker scrambling for clevertude will use the word "well," well, as some sort of comma splice instigator.

There is really no need for it. If you write a sentence and feel compelled to sound clever by, well, using the word "well" you need to read it without it. Chances are it sounds, well, a lot better without it. You may not notice but that is because you are a, well, moron.

Poetry

I have posted a selection from my little book of poetry entitled "You Are an Awful Child and Your Parents Do Not Care For Your Company." It is my way of answering to the accusations of my troubled childhood.

My brother. This reminds me of him.

The wind still carries the gentle scent of Melinda to my door. I stand and swear I smell her perfume mixed with the decaying leaves in the backyard trash heap. I recall she wore it upon her wrists, so perhaps this is "poetic justice."

Detest

You child, you there, you stop your sniveling whine,

If I wanted to give you oranges, twould be only the rinds.

Your tears upset me not because of your pain

but because they produce painful pricks in my brain.

You come into the room with lamentations for me

Assaulting my nostrils with your odor of pee?

I've my globe bar to polish, please do go away

My regret in knowing you grows with each day.

Elucidate

I think its time to say a little something else about some things that have turned up in the electronic ether here on Mental Vomit. They are two short stories hand-crafted by the Gods and transmitted via my fingers.

The first is okay. The second is terrible.

Do not judge them as you haven't the capacity to tangle with my genius.

There is no news from Melinda, just the gentle rustle of decaying leaves.

Listen: Will Reed is unstuck in time. It’s an event that occurs with alarming regularity - but Will may be the first. If Jon Smith were not around to contend for the title.

Listen: Jon Smith is unstuck in time. They both are. And it’s something of a complicated matter.

“Listen,” Will said to Amanda. “I am unstuck in time.”

Amanda was stuck in time. She was an artist painting a mural on a long wall and she could never go back to see what she had already painted. She could only focus on the skinny piece of picture she was working on. If someone started painting over it, she would never know - she would keep painting until she ran out of paint.

Amanda and Will were becoming quite close. Amanda had taken up the habit of leaving a toothbrush in Will’s apartment. And Will had a conscience. So he felt he would tell Amanda about being unstuck.

Jon Smith didn’t have a conscience. He was trying to kill Will Reed.

“Jon Smith is trying to kill me,” said Will Reed. “And he has been trying for a long, long time.”

Amanda looked up at him from the couch. Will Reed was very nice to her, except for him forgetting what she said some times. In the middle of conversations, Will Reed would stop talking, blink, and ask what they were talking about. Sometimes he would stop talking, blink, and say “Amanda! Oh, thank goodness.” And this was atypical behavior, so she was worried and had asked him about it often.

Will was blinking. “Amanda!! Thank goodness,” he said. “This is when I tell you about being unstuck, correct? This isn’t earlier?”

“Yes,” said Amanda, not really doubting because Will didn’t seem to be a violent crazy person. If this was the worst of it, she’d be quite happy.

“I was just at a duel,” he said. “Jon Smith was shooting at me and I was avoiding him. The police managed to arrest him, and that was that.”

“Okay.”

“I reckon you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s okay. I suppose I might be crazy. But I do have proof.”

“You do?”

He blinked. “Amanda? Oh, this is the proof conversation again?”

“Where were you that time?” she asked.

“Jon and I were in a cave. He was trying to hit me in the head with a femur. I managed to duck out and run away. Then he set my boat on fire and we drifted away from each other. This was a different time. I made it to a small island where I lived on coconuts and tiny lizards for a hundred years.”

“That’s odd. Did you eat them raw?”

“I did not. This particular type of lizard is extinct now, but should you ever see a bluish lizard with red spots on a pacific island, you must remember, dear Amanda, to cook it thoroughly. I poached mine in a coconut shell using the sun and some glass from a large jar.”

“Interesting,” she said.

“The things I have seen. Or that I think I’ve seen, if the look on your face is true,” he said.

Amanda looked incredulous. “It is hard to swallow,” she said.

Jon Smith didn’t have anyone to talk to about being unstuck because Jon Smith didn’t care to know anyone. He often met girls for the express purpose of using them for the things bad men use girls for. Sometimes he used other men, but he felt guilty afterward because it was not the Way Things Were.

People should not be unstuck. He knew that. But he was unstuck. Obviously, it was his life to be a bad man, he reasoned. And it was very fun. And it was his life, as well, to kill Will Reed. Because Will Reed was unstuck. And Will Reed was therefore as bad as him.

For a long, long time (neither Will Reed or Jon Smith knew how long) Jon had been trying to kill Will. Scars littered his skin. He knew they could be killed, killed quite easily. Perhaps by a bullet or a piano falling.

But whenever Jon Smith jumped somewhere, somewhere he could kill Will Reed, he never managed to do it. Will was clever, as clever as Jon, and he couldn’t seem to get the jump on him.

Will had led Amanda to a large storage trailer in a nice part of town. There were several streetlights and many people milling about. If Will Reed was crazy, Amanda thought, at least I’ll be able to get away.

“How does one get unstuck in time?” Amanda asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “I didn’t even know about it at first. But one day I was remembering a particularly lovely day by a stream and then I was at the stream. It wasn’t a memory at all. I was there. And when I came back to where I’d been, no time had passed. I was a bit disoriented, but I’ve got it mostly figured out now.”

“You can go when you want to?” she asked, shivering. It was cold out. Will was finding the right key.

“I can. But when Jon tries to kill me, I get pulled back.”

“Do you go back often?” she asked.

“Only when I have to, these days,” he smiled at her. And in that smile, she knew he wasn’t planning anything terrible for her. He only wanted to plan happy things for her. He opened it. They went in and he turned on the lights.

“What a lot of junk,” she said. And it was.

“Junk?” said Will Reed. “This is what I have collected from a lifetime of unstuckedness.”

“What’s this, then?” she asked, picking up a feather.

“That’s a quill,” he said. “It was used by a famous writer whose name escapes me at the moment. I admit I am a packrat with limited organizational skills.”

She laughed. “Well, it’s all well and good being immortal,” she said.

“Not technically,” he said.

“Not technically,” she said. “But you’ve collected a lot of junk. You might have organized it.”

“You’re right.” He had a look in his eyes. Slowly he led her out of the trailer and closed the door.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t want to shock you,” he said. He blinked. “Ah, Amanda,” he said. “I think things will be much clearer,” he said.

They went back in. All of the junk was neatly labeled and on shelving. It seemed like a wonderous antique store, now.

“That’s amazing,” she said. “How wonderful.” She picked up a vase. “Is this Ming?” she asked. “Tell me it’s Ming and I’ll believe you.”

“That would be a lie,” he smiled. “It’s a fairly worthless vase I grabbed from the White House when it was on fire. I couldn’t help it.”

She gave him a curious look. “But this was a mess,” she said. “I thought being unstuck in time meant you had to relive things in specific ways,” she said.

“Mostly,” Will Reed said. “But not always. I went back to times I was in the area and not doing much of anything. Or when I was moving this. A bit of cleaning up doesn’t change anything important.”

“What would happen if something important happened?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

Jon Smith was a villain in a story. He knew this. Right now he was sharpening a knife because he thought perhaps he could stab Will Reed. He was hiding in a shadow. Shadows were nice places for Jon Smith to be. He could wrap the darkness around him like an overcoat and scheme. Sometimes he would go to times when he’d been in particularly lovely darkness that had seemed like a down comforter around him. It was lovely.

Jon Smith did not have a trailer full of junk. He only wanted to kill Will Reed. He had spent his life trying to and it was becoming a source of frustration the longer the life went.

“Could this Jon guy kill you in the past?”

“I don’t truly know,” Will said to her. “I hope not. I don’t really know what might happen.”

“Do you ever have to travel to times you’d rather not.”

“Not often,” Will said. “Sometimes I travel to my hundred year island because it is peaceful and I enjoyed watching the waves. Once, I was forced back to the plague years when Jon Smith tried to stuff my trousers with rats.”

Amanda could not help herself and laughed at him.

“It was a fairly humrous attempted homicide,” agreed Will Reed. “But I ran away. Far too much of my time has been spent running from Jon Smith.”

“Why does he want to kill you?”

“I don’t know.”

Amanda frowned. Her mind was entering squooshy territory. This was because the idea of Will Reed dying did not appeal to her, especially now that he trusted her with a probably true secret. And she thought about Time.

“What about us?” she asked.

“What about us?” he replied.

“Can you tell me what happens with us?” she said. “In the future? Or would that ruin it?”

“I might tell you,” Will replied. “But I can’t now. I can only unstuck to times I’ve lived already. This will be very confusing to you but I can’t travel to the future because I haven’t lived it yet. I always have a point I can’t travel past and it always moves forward at the rate of time. It is just the way things are.”

“And that point is now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” Will Reed said. “But it is the way it is.”

“Okay,” she said. She looked at him.

“What about your past?” she asked him.

“What about it?” he said.

“Have you been married?” she said. “How many times? Who to? Have you ever been anyone famous?”

He laughed and sat down. “Yes. More than a few. To beautiful women I loved. I have been Will Reed as long as I can remember. I’ve never wanted to be in the limelight.”

“Oh.”

“I try not to get involved much,” he said. “It has been a long time since my last wife. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“Jon Smith, now he hasn’t always been Jon Smith. He’s never been very famous, but he has been Grand Vizier for several kings. Or Assistant whatever. I’m sorry to say I don’t like him much.”

“I don’t either,” Amanda said.

Jon Smith came out of the shadows. He had a sharp, sharp knife. It was stolen from a kitchen. He ran to the well-lit door and snuck through it into the labeled antiques. The bright sodium light outside cast his shadow into the dimmer trailer and the Abomination and his whore turned in surprise.

“Jon!”

The whore ran at Jon Smith but he swatted her down. He was angry at her for protecting the Abomination and angry at himself for failing so often and angry, too, at the Abomination for not dying long, long ago. He raised up his sharp, sharp knife to kill the whore and a vase smashed in his face. He howled in pain and dropped the knife.

“Amanda, come,” bellowed the Abomination as he grabbed the whore’s hand and kicked Jon in the stomach. They ran out and locked the door, slamming the hasp closed. Jon was trapped.

Will’s breath streamed into the cool night air. “That was Jon Smith,” he said to Amanda.

Amanda was holding her face. Her fingers gingerly prodded the bruise on her cheek. “I don’t like him,” she said.

“Well,” said Will Reed, “At least we’re safe from him right now. We can go to the police station and they can arrest him.”

They started down the sidewalk.

Locked in the trailer, Jon Smith screamed in rage.

Will Reed blinked several times and then looked in confusion at Amanda.

“What is it?” she said. “When were you?”

“Everytime,” he replied. “He tried to stab me in Egypt. Starve me in an Inquistion. Shoot me in countless wars. He was everywhere. He even tried to follow me to my island, but he couldn’t manage the current.”

“Wow.”

“He’s angry. Angrier than ever.”

Jon Smith was angry. Angrier than ever. Failure. Failure. Failure. He smashed a porcelein chamber pot. He threw a Bakelite Radio. He grabbed a sword and was ready to slice everything to ribbons when he looked at it. He looked closely at the blade and the handle.

Jon Smith set it down and looked at everything in the trailer, from the ancient fossils to the modern posters.

Jon Smith was not a smart man. But he was crafty.

Will Reed and Amanda had walked a bit in silence when Will stopped and blinked.

“What is it?” Amanda asked.

“I was in the English forest,” Will Reed said. “Jon Smith was pointing his long bow at me. He had a clear shot. I think I could have dodged it, but it would have been close. He might have killed me.”

“And?”

“He loosened the tension on the bow. He put the arrow away. And he walked away,” said Will Reed. He blinked a few more times. “He’s been behind the trigger several times,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem he’s pulled it.”

Amanda looked confused.

“I remember he tried to kill me before,” Will said. “But now it’s as if he isn’t. Even the club in the cave. He’s changing things,” he said.

“Jon Smith is?” asked Amanda.

“Jon Smith,” said Will Reed. “Oh, he’s interesting. He keeps pretending he’s going to kill me,” he laughed. “Funny how violent he was about it at the trailer,” he said.

Amanda looked at him. “That’s not what you said before,” she said. “You told me he was constantly trying to kill you.”

“Jon Smith?” asked Will Reed. “No. He’s simply keeping me on my toes.”

Amanda was worried, but she didn’t know why.

Jon Smith was in the trailer, still. He blinked a bit, himself and returned to the present. The oldest item in the trailer seemed to be a slim slice of ivory. Jon Smith stay stuck for a minute to remember the mammoth the Abomination had hunted. He had been there before, he remembered. And things hadn’t worked out. He picked up items and remembered them, finding the perfect object.

It was a wooden toy - a doll. Carved from a log of oak over a winter.

Amanda looked at Will Reed and saw the scar on his cheek.

“What’s that scar from?” she asked.

“Strangest thing,” he said. “Jon Smith managed to scratch my face one winter long ago.”

“What about that one?” she asked about the other cheek. “Was that Jon Smith as well?”

Amanda did not remember all the scars on Will’s face - not even a little. Nor the scars on his arms.

And in the trailer, Jon Smith wasn’t there. He was unstuck in time and had decided, every moment of him, to focus.

Will Reed blinked, and blinked, and looked at Amanda as old, awful scars blossomed on his face.

“Amanda?” he said.

“Oh my God,” she said. And she wanted to run back to the trailer and find a way to stop what Jon Smith was doing, but she knew it wouldn’t help.

And Jon Smith and Will Reed were in a thatched cottage in the North of England and Will Reed was bleeding from dozens of cuts on his face and arms and Jon Smith was slicing with the whittling knife he’d snatched from him. And the blood was leaving Will Reed and making him weak as he collapsed on the floor.

And Will Reed fell to the sidewalk and Amanda gasped in fright.

Jon Smith focused. There was no unstuckedness. There was only this moment. His eyes were black and piercing and looked right at the Abomination’s chest. Below the spot the Abomination’s heart beat, slowing down as it’s workload decreased. But it was not slow enough for John Smith who brought the knife down, piercing the bone and muscle and heart of Will Reed, who screamed.

And Will Reed screamed. And Amanda screamed.

Jon Smith stumbled from the cottage. He was stuck in time. He did not care. All that mattered was making it to the trailer, so far away, so long from now, so he would know what he knew now.

In the trailer, Jon Smith stopped blinking and smiled. It was not a friendly smile, especially with the teeth. And someone might think he lost his head and laughed in a way that might frighten those that heard it. But Jon Smith sighed in relief. He picked up a dagger and fell on it and died in that trailer, unhappy but satisfied.

And Amanda’s face was streaked with tears over Will Reed’s body, which was still there.

And he rolled over and looke up at her and his face was clean and enigmatic, except for a scar over his eyebrow.

“Amanda?” he said. “Thank goodness.”

“You fell,” she said. She could not recall why, now, she had been crying so much.

“I did,” he said. “The excitement must have gotten to me. It’s quite a comfortable sidewalk.”

Amanda was kneeling by him and he put his hands behind his head and smiled at her.

“Where did you get that scar?” she asked.

“Stiches,” he said to her. “I fell out of an apple tree.” He smiled again. “I should get up,” he said. “We still have to get to the police station.”

William Reed stood up and took Amanda’s hands. Despite being attacked, he was feeling quite chipper. Amanda smiled at him.

“You feel okay?” she asked him.

“I do.”

And William Reed, who had been named William Reed by his father William Reed (who was carrying on a long family tradition), took Amanda’s hand and they went to the police station.

Update

I deleted all my old posts if you are wondering where they are. They were baggage to me, nothing more. Melinda may weep that our adventures are no longer scribed, but she can weep alone by the perfume counter I abandoned her near.

Don't spoil things for me. Don't comment with replies of sorrow that she's gone.

My new love is far sweeter.

My new love is kinder.

Your sorrow is un-needed. Your pity is abhorred, and I will not tolerate your false missives of sorrow, so get out of my life, all of you.

Post One

Do not read this. It is not important and you will have wasted your life in the time it will take to have read it, when you could have memorized a Russian word or drawn a picture of a watermelon. If you are reading this, you have wasted precious seconds of your life that you will not get back.