The moon’s on its way to November, sailing a sullen sky. I think the whole world breathed a sigh of relief tonight, when the major told us to find shelter, get some shut eye before tomorrow. We’re too close to the enemy for camp fire, all of us hiding behind trees, and under bushes, keeping as quiet as smoke, settling into the dirt and leaves like animals on the prowl.
When they can’t ignore the stink coming from his room anymore, Mom and Dad break the lock on Jeff’s door and go in, prepared, they think, for whatever happens next. It’s not like they don’t have an idea anyway, they still do all his laundry. There’s not a sock in his hamper that isn’t stiff and crusty and yellowed. Mom doesn’t even gag about it anymore it happens so much, she just makes sure to wear latex gloves when she does the whites.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why they always smell like sugar.
Continue reading “Sweet Boy by Matthew Lyons – Adult Content”
Before I begin, I would like to welcome Nik back from his holiday. He was in Wales doing all things Welsh. As is my understanding he would be eating really, really, roasting, hot loaves, taming a roaming dragon, drinking Merlyn, seeking out a Max Boyce CD and trying to win a chair. They are a mystical race the Welsh.
It is great to have you back my friend!!
Continue reading “Week 133 – Principle, Discipline And Lactic Acid”
He looked out into the grounds and couldn’t understand the blackness. He thought that it was dead leaves. There had been a storm throughout the night which had unsettled. The dreams had frightened. He became anxious again as he tried to recall. They teased him, they were there hovering near to the edge of his consciousness, without form…disturbing. The Priest gave up and went into his bathroom to shave. The tremor in his hand changed his mind. He rinsed his face and tried to pray, the familiar words, spoken every morning since he entered the Diocese sixty years back were alien to him. They choked him and he felt a tear run down his cheek. It occurred to the old man that maybe he was having a stroke.
Your first kiss wants to play make-believe. You be the wife and I’ll be the husband, he says during recess. You’re in 3rd grade and love make-believe. He kisses you on the cheek and asks what’s for dinner. You will be whoever he wants you to be.
There’d be silence in the seconds before the explosion. Even the crash and roar, the shifting of the sand and silt above would momentarily cease. Then you’d sit there crouched in the dark wondering what had happened to your breath. You’d count it in as somewhere ahead there’d be the movement of a body in scurrying retreat.
I.
“Dear Lord Jesus – please take care of my mom. Please welcome my papa into heaven, Lord. He was a good man and you’ll see that when you talk to him. Everyone knows it. My mom’s good, too, so please watch over her. She says she doesn’t believe in you – but I do – and I know that she does in her heart. She knows how much you love all of your children and I don’t want to die. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”
The fight starts in the kitchen between a couple of chefs, which means it could be about any number of things (drugs, booze, girls, hours, pay), but because Terry and Sean are a pair of obnoxious, stupid assholes, it’s about some soup. Terry thinks the bisque could use some paprika, but Sean fucking hates paprika.
That’s it. That’s all it takes to set them off.
I read this week that the average Britain would eat ½ tonne of breakfast cereal in their lifetime. You may think that’s excessive but when you realise what a drug problem we have and how your average chemically dependant person can only really digest cereal, it all begins to make sense. But to be fair, with what they spend on cereal, they save on toilet paper as smack bungs them up. If you can overlook the blood-spray on the walls, you normally find that an addicts toilet is surprisingly clean!
We once were a hardy nation who started the day with porridge, we now have a heroin nation who starts the day with Coco-Pops.
Continue reading “Week 132 – Coco-Pops, Stationers And Challenges”
Those who say the truth will set you free have probably never been polygraphed. I had the experience in my early thirties during a campaign of self-renewal, leading inevitably to the West Coast. After spending a decade as a counselor at the Indiana Penal Farm, a provincial Midwest prison, I felt like a bastard at a family reunion. Was it because I built on my education instead of boozing with good ol’ boy guards? I had attended a nearby state university under a blind assumption: the patented belief that a master’s degree would open the door to promotions. Sadly, the reverse proved true. Organizations will stigmatize overachievers as surely as they flag the fuckups. (If you doubt this, watch any season of Survivor.) And so I was deemed overqualified when I faced the promotion boards. One of the inmates summed it up well when I told him I was leaving. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Do it soon. You don’t need to be hanging around Podunk, Indiana.”
literally stories 