rtperson
It's armed savagery. It's out in the street. It's all around you, in your face, up in your lunchbox. They kick down your door, grab your sister by the hair and push her out into the street. It's a madhouse, a madhouse. The wave after wave of strangers marching in the streets, arms linked, chanting.
You could have but you didn't. You could have but you didn't. You stood there, shaking, it was all down to you, and what did you do? Nothing. What did you say? What did you do? Hell, man, it was all down to you, and you just stood there. Coward.
It filled the earth, it reached out into space and tickled the nostrils of each satellite, it found a place in the grass, and buckled under the pavement, saying, Smell me! Smell me! The fragrance of time, smelled fresh, in its passing, proved more now than it ever did before or since.
The jet engines strapped to the sides of the car looked so big that they were almost in danger of falling off. They revved, they roared, their backsides puckered with flame, and as he got into the driver's seat, he thought, Yeah, yeah, just what I need.
It came apart in my hands. One day there was a pipe that connected water to the house, to the bathroom, to the sink, to the dishwasher, and I dug it up from the front yard and it simply dissolved. One day I had a problem with water seeping into my kitchen. Solved that one.
It stood there in the corner of the basement, its door open, the flames and coal soot roasting behind the cast iron, red belly scorching out heat and warmth into the room. And he watched it, shovel in hand, watched it and wondered what it would feel like to put his hand in, and to hold on for as long as possible.
Stretching on, out beyond the trees, out in front of both of them, and endless array of time, and endless vista, and endlessly twisting roads, all of which curve into each other, and then there are the ends of the endless, and there are forever ends, which is when endlessnesses meet up and curve.
It stood there, at the top of the log, impossibly huge, like the size of a man's head. And I drove by. "It was black," I said to her, "Black with orange stripes." "How fast were you going?" she asked. "Fifty," I said. "And she said "You aren't supposed to see the stripes when you're going by at fifty miles per hour."
They thunk off you, the cleats hitting the ground, the clods of earth kicking up into your teeth. They thunk, the clattering feet running down the pitch, ball in hand, a herd of boys running after. The bewilderment. Why care? Why do this? Why compete? What has that team ever done to me?
As loud as the punch was, as much as it echoed off his cheek and caused his ears to burn and the blood to fill up in his mouth, as much as it seemed the world shone brightly, as if he were in the moment seeing deep into some mystery, it disappointed him. It should have been harder.
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