Intro to October in Normal entries

I know flashes are done, dead, over with. At least as an institution here on Prosebox, if they ever were. October was flash month. In the bad old days on that other journaling site, flashers loved horror, and October, before it was ever octphomo, was flash month; 31 shards of bloody flash.

I posted, just the other day, one of my favorite ones of mine, I mean of the October flashes. That old site didn’t let you download other peoples journals. I sent it to the GF too. She was flattering. Among the hundreds of adequate flashes I wrote a few good ones. I write well when I write something that drives me. I write well too when I’m trying to sound professional, well enough to fool people into thinking I might be intelligent; it’s a skill set that’s hard to boast about without calling yourself dumber than you look.

I miss that level of energy. Ok, it’s not energy in a kinetic sense, I mean it’s sitting at a keyboard pounding on a buttons, but high internal energy makes the blank page spark. I honestly believe that if I had ambition and patience I could market stuff. But, mostly, I’m nostalgic and like finding lost things in my archives, and I like my lost things raw and rusty. So here’s a few more I dug up from October flashes over the years. Horror is subjective. Some folks get fight or flight if their tie is stained or their mascara is light right before a meeting. If all of our lives were in danger, imminent up close danger, once a year, horror as a genre would not exist. Ties and mascara though …

“I am a dog” Sam barked “I am the Old Man’s Dog”
The crossed Chew Sticks just hung on the wall in the cramped little house. He felt uncomfortable indoors, even taking his meals outside when it wasn’t too wet or cold.
“I’ve lain at the old man’s feet while he has knelt like a bitch and asked for your help,” Sam barked again. In the empty dark building his barks retorted like shots from the old man’s bang stick.
Maybe, he thought, the chew sticks need light. I don’t know how to turn on lights. I don’t know many things. I know I am a dog, a working dog. I herd sheep, I bark at their flanks and they run away from my barks, when they’ve gone too far I bark at the other flank. I steer them where the old man wants; out to pasture, back to the pen.
I know that meat tastes good. I know I am not supposed to eat the chickens that peck in the dirt by the barn. I know sometimes the Old Man drinks the stuff that makes him cry and I must sit there and have my head petted and sleep in the big bed. Mostly I know about sheep.
The chew sticks should know about sheep; the chew sticks know everything I know. The sheep outside look like sheep, but they must not be. Sam tried hard to picture the immediate past. He had a hard time with it; it’s not how a dog’s memory works.
The lights hadn’t come on in the big house, Sam knew this was wrong, he didn’t know why, in the immediate past, but knew it was wrong. He barked at the dark house. Behind him he heard hooves lots of them. Sam howled to remember, his memory merged with the immediate present. They were out there, heads turned to the side, looking for an entrance.
Hooves behind him and then the bleating, he had turned and growled. They didn’t retreat, but stopped, half circled, holding him at the foot of the dark house steps. The black sheep appeared in the doorway. He was bigger. The black is who Sam herded the most, the others would follow him.
The Black Sheep stood in the threshold and let out a bleat that sounded like a roar. Sam could smell fresh blood it rode the air on the black’s breath. It was man blood, meat like blood, like there was muscle and flesh.
Sam barked sharp and loud and kept barking. It was a warning, it was calling for the man, and, Sam knew, it had an edge he’d only smelled before in sheep and some men who had visited the farm and the man who lived with the crossed chew sticks; fear. The sharper and quicker the barks came the less the hooves retreated. Some of the whites had chicken feathers and other blood on their muzzles. Sam smelled fear everywhere.
He had seen, saw, sees the break in the line and ran, runs, is running for the crossed stick house. He knows a way in that a dog on his belly can go, he knew, knows, is knowing there are no windows except the colored one no one can see through. Sheep can’t crawl on their bellies, he thinks, then, Sheep can’t tear at flesh, can’t eat chickens.
“Help me oh mighty chew sticks,” Sam barked “Like you help the Old men. Please.”
Outside even the crickets and birds had stopped chirping there was only the terrible bleating of the black, bleating orders, and the hooves surrounding the house of Crossed Chew Sticks.

“Love is a dog.”
She scowled, wrapped her cowl tighter around her neck.
“Yes, it drinks from the toilet bowl, chews meat from the bone and sucks the marrow, humps your leg and licks its own ass.”
I looked in her eyes and she looked away.
“You don’t understand.”
“Sure I do, I have a dog.”
She tugged at the fetters and feathered her mount to a stop.
“Love, you don’t understand love.”
I held my hand out to her she let it lay in the air like a fish on a table.
“I understand metaphors, even weak ones made of tin.”
Her boot heel hit the ground and her mount heeled to.
“Love is a dog; loyal, the dog choses you, follows you on faith. Instinctual, protective, the dog doesn’t qualify why your chosen, why you go where you go, puts no condition on that you are his human; even when afraid the dog stands between you and harm. At the end of the day the dog cashews at your feet and even if you send him into the cold and the dark, he waits for you.”
A light rain falls, she hands the reins to the groom.
“You don’t understand, that same dog also drink from the toilet bowl, sucks marrow, licks ass and humps your leg. That’s instinctual as well. The question isn’t whether I’m worthy of the dog, it’s whether the dog is worthy of me.”
She pulled away and pushed her way into the stables.
I stood in the rain. I still don’t know how to convince anyone that neither love nor a dog is a question; they are both answers.

It started with one dog, the year of very bad luck, it started with one dog. We paid a thousand bucks for the stud fee to have Clarisse bred with Spike, a pedigree Norwegian Elk hound with ten blue ribbons. I don’t think dogs can distinguish blue from yellow, which doesn’t mean much, not when it comes to studs; the AKC doesn’t check. Don’t give them an MRI or an SAT. The dog walks past the judges and — shit, I don’t know. I just know the puppies would have sold for between two and four grand.

I don’t think I’d like the kind of guy who drops four grand on a puppy so he can enter him in an AKC beauty contest. I don’t have to like a guy who writes me a check for four grand. Academic anyhow, it didn’t happen. Clarisse had the one puppy and hemorrhaged. A dog litter is supposed to be bigger. A dog isn’t supposed to be born with dysplasia and colitis.

I don’t mean to sound cold; if Clarisse was my dog I’d be rending my hair and on the floor kicking and crying. She was the girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, the bitch who screens my calls. I don’t know if that was bad luck, I probably dodged a bullet there, but at the time it was a bullet I had put in the chamber, and often, and called her sweet nick-names and might have said I love you a time or two right before or after sex. Shit maybe during dinner, I don’t really remember, she’s the bitch who screens my calls; she lost a dog and puppy.

I lost my job too. Ok, I didn’t lose it, it’s right there where I left it, it’s just that security escorts me out when I try claiming it. It makes that fifteen hundred dollar stud fee a twisting knife. I hate bitching about money, makes me feel petty and I’m sure it’s some kind of jinx; bitch about money and bad money mojo comes. Boy you forget to enter one insurance premium and lo and behold a motherfucker up and dies, family sues the company and the company fires you. It’s not like they would have gotten out of paying if I had entered the premium the day I got it. Fuck.

Oh, and my car quit running. So, that’s not really bad luck, that was just shitty maintenance on a car that’s been terminal for three years. You might even call it good luck, three years of good luck. Oh, yeah, and my landlady died, which is pretty bad luck for her loved ones (ok, so there is no plural, I’m not even sure there was a singular, but I think she had relatives) but sort of good luck for me too. I’m six months in arrears on the rent and no one has broken my knee caps yet. Not really good luck, but a postponement of consequences (no one is really going to break my knees; they will really kick me out and change the locks).

I have this bump in my armpit too. Haven’t seen a doctor, waiting until next year. This year it’s probably cancer, next year, maybe, it’ll just be an ingrown hair. I don’t know, cancer wouldn’t be so bad, I mean dying this year would sort of be good luck. If this shit, this one dog year, is the worst comeuppance I’ve got, um, coming and uppancing I’d say that was pretty lucky. Most motherfuckers have to suffer their entire sentence in this vale of tears. Would have been even luckier if I had cancer while I was still with the bitch that screens my calls, then she’d have lost a dog, a puppy and a boyfriend. Only nine more months, right?

Freedom is not a word for nothing left to lose. Losing all your shit is a phrase for nothing left to lose. Freedom is a word for, um, shit, possessing freeness or something.

Last updated October 14, 2016