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Crying Over Soiled Milk By abandonedstation
Fuck what a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaste. That’s how Collins saw it as he poured the white sludge over his Cheerios. Not only does the cereal have to go down the sink, but the entire bag of milk, freshly shoved into the container with it’s one corner raggedly snipped, has to follow. It wasn’t fair. He remembered the little plastic clip on the big bag that held the three individual ones said the expiry date was the nineteenth. He had five more days for this final sac of moo juice. Was it the summer? Was the warm weather just stirring up the molecules in such a way that the whole thing turns rotten quicker than the esteemed milk scientists could ever have imagined? Collins was not a man of letters, and being a low-level camera operator for a middling television drama didn’t give him the chances to consider and discuss such chemical-related subtleties. It would remain a mystery as to the sudden and chalky turn. Nothing to be done. Dust yourself off, toss some bread in the toaster, eat a banana, and move on. The unending flux of Mother Nature and her whims win again. Then a brilliant plan struck Collins’ usually rote and unremarkable mind like a rock encrusted with diamonds. Let it not curdle in vain. A Grinch-like grin began to spread across his face. No reason to let sleeping roommates lie. Picking up the lime green container by its easy access handle, Collins left the kitchen and began tiptoeing up the stairs, wondering if his three compatriots within the house were still foolish and naïve enough to keep their bedroom doors unlocked. At the top of the stairs he surveyed the four doors, three of which held his unresponsive prey, and the fourth was simply the can. His own bedroom was in the basement, which at first sounds like the shit end of the stick, but in truth was well worth the low ceiling since it was the coolest place to sleep in the sticky hot summer they were all slogging through with bleary eyes. Speed would be of the essence here if he wished to hit all three targets. Checking his watch, he was also reminded that starting soon would also be necessary. It was three minutes before eight, and two of these men had alarm clocks that would ring in less than one hundred and eighty seconds. Don’t second guess yourself. Go. Shale’s room is right there. He the lightest sleeper so you have to hit him first. So Collins steps forward and tries the doorknob carefully and finds himself opening the door effortlessly and entering the messy room save for the cheap desk in the corner that was spotless save for the computer. In the bed was a motionless creature, on its side and not facing the door. Too easy. Collins tiptoed over and without a second thought tilted the container of spoiled milk above Shale’s shoulders, neck, and head, the liquid lumpily running out in a halfhearted stream. He counted in his head: One, two, three, four- At number four the slumbering body reacted and that was his cue to leave, fast and grinning. He didn’t even properly return the container to its upright position, letting a bit of spill onto the blanket and floor as he rushed out of the room. No time to listen to the confused sputtering or the body sitting up to make sense of this bizarre sensation. He was out the door, closing it quickly, striding down the hallway and then entering into Monroe’s little slice of personal heaven, his stereo system surrounded by an extensive music collection. Collins found him lying on his back, mouth wide open in slumber, and he was glad to not hear Shale’s yelps of confusion. So far, so good. He poured liberal amounts of the cow stuff over Monroe’s face and mouth, leading the man to quickly sputter, wince, and wake up, eyes apparently crying clotted white tears. This movement meant one thing to Collins: Keep moving, two down one to go. At this point, with two of them up, there was no reason to try and keep quiet. He stomped quickly out of Monroe’s room and could now hear Shale’s angry and nonplussed sputtering from down the hall. No time to soak it in, though, as his smile grew wider and wider and he approached the door to Debs’ bedroom. Trying the door and finding success, he step inside and made no attempt at being quiet. Debs slept like the dead. In fact, this comic assault might not even be enough to rouse him. His loss, Collins reasoned as he walked over to his third roommate, sleeping in a fetal position with no blankets at all as Debs’ room was by far the hottest in the house. Collins heard footsteps and sharp bursts of profanity in the hallway. The jig was about to be up. He began to pour whatever was left in the container all over Debs’ crumpled body, from toes to forehead. Since he didn’t have anywhere else to go after this – except, if he was smart, the witness relocation program at least for a couple days – Collins watched Debs’ reaction with fascination. He was able to pour it over half the man’s body before he began to squirm, soaking the boxer shorts and ratty fundraiser t-shirt to the skin. But that wasn’t enough to get the man up, apparently. Collins’ still had untold seconds to practically empty the container of old milk on Debs’ head. “What the fuck?” Monroe bellowed from two doors and several walls away, loud enough that even the soaked, now-stinking, sleeping man below Collins began to stir. Time to bail, Collins thought, which is what he did, ready to accept whatever ramifications waited for him in the hallway with a prankster-laden smile. *** When it first splashed upon his shoulders and neck, the sleeping Shale felt the idea of self-sabotage rush over him like an unsettling and uncertain brown wave, lacking gobs of much needed confidence. He wasn’t dreaming, but something straddling his subconscious and conscious made shocking conclusions based on the weak and bizarre signals being sent along the line from the nerve endings. What was this, what was dripping, spreading, stinking, cool but quickly warming on his skin, doing it so fast it almost burned? It was a sentence, a punishment, a reminder of things in the waking past. When the world gave him the chance to move forward he took three steps back. His future was as unstable and valuable as gasoline, and he had no problem lighting it up for old time’s sake. And he was no longer going to be allowed to forget such slights to fortune’s wheel.
Shale rose and turned to face his room and saw the door close quickly, his attacker escaping without recognition. Only after that did he turn his attention back to himself. Whatever it was his roommate – probably Collins, who was usually up first and is an occasional jackass –poured on him was drying very quickly. Shale wasn’t so much brushing it off him than inadvertently coating himself in it. “Eww”, he muttered in confusion, and with a deep breath in got a whiff of the stink, knowing exactly what it was, “ohh…shit…” Shale got to his feet but only tiny flecks of the milk actually flung off him and landed on his bed sheets. Most of it was digging deep into his skin, an immediate and seemingly impossible tattooing in real and wild time. He got and looked at the full length mirror. He stunk like old milk, but that didn’t keep his attention for very long. He was stained. His face, neck, and shoulders were a splotchy beige, a ghostly pale yellow. So were his hands, which he charged with wiping the sludgy whatever-it-is away. “What the fuck?” It looked like a bizarre reverse tan. No, even worse, those bizarre skin pigmentation cases that five year olds stare at obsessively without compunction. “What the fuck?!” *** For Monroe, the smell hit him just a split second before the splashes onto his face. It reeked of snubbed opportunity of weak handshakes closed doors and baseless blowoffs. Of the world wronging him just because it could. An easy scapegoat ground to the dust because it’s cheaper that way. On the outside barely looking in because he had no idea where to look. Monroe was prohibited from knowing what he was missing, no matter how hard he struggled and kicked and slaved over papers and pistons. So with that beginning the discomfort, the feeling of not exactly drowning but still being dosed in some sort of liquid was a shock to the system and he sputtered and shook his head and upper body violently, twisting to and fro, eyes still shut in just-waking confusion. It was a bridge from a dream. A bizarre dream of walking down the street with friends and suddenly being smacked in the face with something, a smirking insult from his own subconscious. But then he came awake and the fleeting feelings of that moment lingered. Instead of pain and shock, liquid dripping off his face, spreading over his nose and cheeks and forehead, pooling momentarily in the corners of his eyes, going to work with gusto. “Ugggghhh…”, Monroe moaned, tasting the chalky garbage, the fact that it was still cool doing little to help go down easily, so he sputtered and gagged to get it both down and back out. When he finally rubbed and opened his eyes he found he didn’t, not really. Still shut or may as well be. “Oh god, what…” he began, struggling to sit up in his bed. Monroe began blinking violently trying to reset his vision as if his pupils were simply facing the wrong way. No dice. Everything was darkness and something was running down his face and upper body. “Hey…hey”, he said to no one, panic rising in his voice, “what’s… someone…what’s going on?!” *** Debs was in another land when Collins quickly leaned over him, believing it was only a matter of time before the gig was up and all three were suddenly awake. But in this case, the man lost in slumber brought the sudden onslaught of rotten cow juice into his subconscious, which was fortunate, as it came willingly, and bearing gifts. Simply running over and through his scalp, the dreadful concoction massaged the skin and snuck underneath, wiggling in a metaphysical fashion through the skull so it could dance and sing for the average encephalon caged inside. Debs felt intense and explosive fireworks light up his mind, the answers to eternal questions suddenly shining through brilliantly. Rather than blow fuses and punch in tumours, they eradicated the wall between him and the complex basic mechanics of the universe. Some of Debs receded into the shadows, replaced by an improved entity, Debs+milk. When he opened his eyes and felt this pabulum of the gods run over him in a glorious instant baptism, he saw through his roommate’s paltry sense of humour, through the walls of his bedroom, through the molecules in the air outside, and through the ever-expanding field of space at the edges of the universe. He rose without effort. His flesh was simply a simple suit he could pilot just as quickly as any other clump of matter or wisps of dust. All was one and one was all. The only difference between him and the bedsheets and the gym socks in the laundry basket was a matter of degrees, and he had all the numbers required. Debs thought the door open and walked towards it, feet never touching the creaky hardwood floor. *** When Collins stepped back into the hallway, a grin a mile wide at the complete success of the mission – his short-term mind soothing lingering concerns with the notion of consequences be damned – he had only a second before Shale practically ripped his bedroom door off its handles to stomp into the hall and find his sudden adversary at the other end. “What the fuck was that?” Shale thundered. “Wow, you’re still covered in it”, Collins giggled. “I can’t get-”, Shale began to retort, only to be cut off by a genuine scream of anguish from inside Monroe’s room, followed by a loud thud. Momentarily forgetting their own situation, both made the move towards Monroe’s door, Shale arriving first, opening it wide. He finds Monroe on the floor, bed sheets all around him as he flails to get up and on his knees, his hands outstretched feebly, trying to grasp onto something, anything. “Who’s-”, Monroe begins. “Dude what’s the problem?” asks Shale quickly, cutting Monroe off this time. “I can’t see!” “What?” Shale asks dumbfoundedly, simply not believing what he’s heard. Now Collins appears at the doorway, still smiling. “Take it easy guys, it’s just some old milk, don’t worry. You’re fine.” “I can’t fucking see!” Monroe repeats at where the voices are coming from. “Oh, fuck off, just rub your eyes a bit more.” “I said I can’t fucking see!” Monroe roared, the intensity throwing Collins off slightly. “Geez, guys, wait a bit before trying to get back at me”, he said, with a hint of confusion in his voice. “What was that shit really?” Shale said,, turning quickly to Collins and grabbing the man’s shirt, “I can’t this shit off me!” “Oh, what are you talking about?” Collins begins, who then brings his hand up to Shale’s shoulders to show how easy you could wipe this stuff off only to find that he couldn’t. “Uh…” “You fuck!” Shale said, going for his throat, only to be stopped by Monroe who crawled over to them and clutched their legs in terror. “What is going on? I’m blind! I’m blind! I can’t see anything!” “Monroe, it was just-” “It was shit!” Monroe yelled back, head titled upwards ‘looking’ up at them if it were possible. The two of them looked down at their roommate, bad milk still slowly streaming off his face. Monroe’s pupils were pure off-white. “What the fuck…”, Shale said, forgetting about his own problem just for a minute. “It was milk! I swear, it’s just…milk!” Collins said to both of them, breaking down into a haze of fear, hands up to show his not-exactly-innocence. “Milk doesn’t do this! Or that!” “Call 911! Right now!” Monroe begged. “Maybe…it’ll just go away in a minute…”, Collins suggested weakly. “If it doesn’t I’m gonna fucking break your face!” “It was an acci-” “SILENCE.” Debs said it, but didn’t come from the end of the hall, from inside his room. The three of them felt that single term shake their skulls. And as if the word itself was the power, and was not a request at all, the three of them immediately became silent. They looked to the end of the hallway, where the bedroom of the fourth and final roommate was located. The door to Debs’ door opened quickly, but there was no one standing in the doorway, hand on knob. Only after a few seconds, did the man appear. Floating an inch above the ground. Upon seeing the man – or perhaps ‘the entity’ would be a better description – the three of them found their tongues again and plead their case to what they immediately felt was not-quite-Debs, but something greater. “Debs, what the fuck is going on?” “Debs, it’s just milk, right? Tell ‘em it’s just milk.” “Dude, help me! I’m blind!” “IT IS WHAT IT IS. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.” Mistaking his declaration for admonition, Collins quickly assented: “Sure, no problem. Never again. I’m sorry, I swear to god, I didn’t mean for this to-” “WHAT IS BROKEN SHALL BE FIXED.” “Oh, thank-”, Monroe begin, crawling towards the direction of Debs’ room to kiss the entity’s feet before falling down dead, as the pulsating consciousness of the universe that now resided in Debs’ brain simply turned the poor blind man off like a switch. “Oh shit”, Collins breathed, looking down at Monroe before looking back into Debs’ impenetrable face. “Wait”, Shale said, bring his hand up towards Debs to indicate ‘stop’, quickly grasping what his not-exactly-friend-anymore’s idea of ‘fix’ was. No dice. Without a hint of physical effort from either of them, Shale suddenly collapses in a heap in the hall. Silence in the house. Collins looks to his two fallen comrades with jaw dangling breath somewhere far away. Not here. I’m dreaming, he thinks, this isn’t real. I’m dreaming about magic bad milk and what happened to my roommates. “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WAKING AND DREAMING IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ASCERTAIN. BOTH ARE REAL ENOUGH FOR THE LMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND. REALITY IS RELATIVE. ACT IN BOTH WITH THE SAME INTENTIONS AND BIASES.” Collins listened but did not even begin to try to understand. Still, it seemed best to not irritate the new version of Debs. “Okay…”, he sputtered, “sure…” “IT IS UNECESSARY TO FABRICATE COMPREHENSION.” Collins understood that, but said nothing for a long time, slowly tearing his eyes off Debs – who seemed to now be glowing – to look at the situation at his feet. “Debs”, he whispered, not exactly to him but to himself, “they’re fucking dead…” “THE FINITE SHALL BE LEFT FOR THE FINITE.” No chance for that to be grasped by our poor protagonist. There was a tear in the fabric of time and space at the end of the hall and Debs entered the rift and with that was gone. Collins slid down the walls to the floor, a body to the left and a body to the right to him. His stomach rumbled, angry that breakfast had once again been postponed.
END
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If there was only one truth, there would be | |||