The concrete heats up inside the mixer
It burns and leaks out of the steel container
then it pours into the space to fill the next level
steaming and occasionally burn
The concrete fills up like hot grey soup
It will set and then crack
soon the building may fall
But the drizzle fell and cooled it off
It was losing heat and bonding well
solidifying slowly over the day
readdy to bear the unrealistic weight
Of another ten stories on top of it
Her arm band fits well
clings to the skin
Stretched over it
From the wrist to the shoulder
To protect the skin from the light
The elgance to it
Inside the arm is snug
The world outside
full of its random mishaps
Something to comfort
Something to put the pieces
back together
There were four of them at the table
One for each side of it
Each one a different opinion
mouths for eating
mouths for describing
Four of them barely using ears
Noise was supposed to contain words
But meaning was alien
Like a homeschooled amish kid
being exposed to the modern world all at once
So the four kept their eyes and ears closed
rasping their voice boxes
And inbetween rants feeding their faces
The table spinning faster and faster
Then came the vomiting
And the rants and vomiting merged\
Becoming one acidic cloud swirling
beating against their faces
consuming them
It sat on the edge of the landfill where the grass grew up to and no further, for whatever residue or runoff killed it beyond there.
A dictaphone. Right next to the dictaphone was an empty rum bottle and small plastic bush.
The dictaphone sat there all afternoon every afternoon, as everything else did.
But sometime after midnight it would turn on like clock work.
A young man’s voice could be heard speaking into the dictaphone. Talking about things that had happened to him during the Iraq war.
The words came out slow and watery as if there were some harmful phantom somewhere inside the blue haze of methane lit up by the road lamps.
The dictaphone played for close to an hour.
A local bum named Darcy who would use the depot as a shelter in winter was the first to observe the strange effect of the dictaphone.
He was having his last drink on a bench a good hundred meters from where the dictaphone was. He heard a sound come on from the edge of the landfill at ten minutes to one am.
He casually walked out under the influence but not totally drunk his liver wasn’t destroyed and he had built a tolerance. He had spent a month there and it was the first night he actually heard the thing, as on the other nights he was either too out of it or fast asleep by the time the thing came on.
As he approached the landfill he started to feel exactly what quotient of his mind felt sober. Or in other words just how real the experience felt.
But the voice in fact stirred something in him. Until his shoes actually touched the trash he was sure it was someone who needed help. But as he got closer he could hear the haunting slowness of the voice. And thought it might be something completely different. His lazy mind did not go to anything supernatural until he had to turn a lantern light on to see where he was going realizing he was going toward the edge of the landfill where the pines were.
Everyone in the local town where he came from knew the stories of the infamous area next to the landfill called the pines.
He looked back toward the cozy lights of the depot and thought, well I could just ignore this weird voice and go get some sleep.
“The pines, the pines.” Darcy mumbled to himself. He felt like the pines were a separate person hired with the sole purpose of making him feel too scared to do something.
So as if in protest, completely irritated at that, he kept walking. But this time he could hear the voice clearly and it was slow, watery, sinister and seemed like it was talking directly to him.
Making matters worse a cold late autumn predawn breeze started bearing down on him reminding him he wasn’t wearing enough layers.
“You only see death around you. The ghosts of those who were taken without even realizing they were dead. And their vestiges lie around this wasteland I have been condemned to today…”
Darcy realized it must be a real ghost, a stream of hot urine shot down his leg and inconveniently into his left sock.
He turned his lantern off and slowly walked back toward the depot’s lights. He grabbed the jacket, he’d left there pulled up his trousers dried himself off.
The croak of the dictaphone clicked on again. Darcy, thinking it was the ghost, possibly aware of his presence accelerated. Changing into some spare socks and underwear putting on the same pants albeit pee smelling, then straight into a march back toward town. Holding his face down as if he’d been beaten and humiliated in a bar brawl only to have the patrons see him walk home ashamed.
He would never know it was purely a dictaphone. However one that had long lost its batteries.
The voice began with some echo
First between the narrow space
somewhere the world couldn't see
Was the will to clean
Yet just got dirty
The voice lifted off
whatever part was touched
Was brought to life from a state of neutrality
From a voice that bent the ear
To a sense of impending bliss
Water came down
over shoulders and hair
Soap and shampoo
A warmth in the water
That tranquilized the troubled mind
Until the body gave itself over
The last vestiges of resistance
washed away and melted by the warmth
And the special flow
Part of me is not me
Part of me is foreign
Unknown to me
Unknown to the world
The outside tinkering away
Mostly unnoticed
Inconvenient then forgotten
virtuous but clumsy
Part of me is not here anymore
A part that clung to the world as I'd fall off it
Into the oxygenless space
Only to burn back into the atmosphere
and fill the shoddy expression
Of taking off
Or the sky is the limit
Part of me would burn off descending
Part of me might bail on the ascension
Would they be parts I recognize
Or strangers hanging on over the years
Only getting exposed when things got tough
Abandoning me like friends and family
That abandoned me and that I abandoned
Unknown to me now
Making no conclusions about them
struggling to make conclusion about myself
Honestly and directly
You will be alone forever, even when you have someone next to you
Noone will make you feel anything deep enough to solve yourself
You will long for more affection and connection and there will be none
You will be hollowed and for your needs ridiculed
You will never truly be loved it is not a plane of existance where this is possible
You are essentially alone and cannot ever be whole again
And so continue with shallow vibrations
Hug the colors and noise
Avoid the deep chasm of truth
Where at a real level each person either acts on their fear or their interest
using their ego as a middle point
You will have the illusion of connection
Needs get starved
Lies are adjusted and plastered over reality
Convenient shapes for things that don't fit
Extremely empty and deeply unloved
people sell hugs
