Forty-Fifth Paradox Writing

The sky is falling!

Or actually, the sky fell.

Yesterday it fell through my ceiling,

Landing square on my slug bug.

Ice from an airplane experts said.

I say the sky’s playing games with me,

And he never said no tag-backs.

“I think we should’ve turned right three palm trees ago.” The sand rustled along the hooves, and two of the riders tightened the cloths covering their mouths.

“Three, huh.”

“Yeah, three. That one by that mountain.”

“You call that a mountain? That was more like a foothill!”

“Um…I think my cammel needs to pee.”

The others glanced at him, their turbans billowing in the dessert wind. Still, they didn’t stop just yet.

One sighed, the narrow band of gold circling his turban glinting in the moonlight. “I suppose he didn’t need to when we were at that oasis not to long ago.”

“Not at all.” The second answered, scrutinizing his robes of fine scarlet while his skin tried to match their hue.

“Hm, well, we could always try the next one.” The third added optimistically, trying to juggle his star chart and his looking glass.

“I’m sure there won’t be one for another few days. You should’ve checked your camel while you had the chance.”

“I did! I swear, no signs at all of any… potential leakage.”

“You sure we couldn’t just take a break? I’m feeling a little tired myself.”

“We can’t. That camel will be doing its business until the moon wanes at this rate. We’re already late.”

“Oh come on. That child has waited for over a year now, it’s not like he’s still waiting in some manger for our gifts.”

“I don’t know..this myrrh might spoil, or that frankincense. It’s not like gold, you know.”

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, also titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn’t dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

“Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it’s broken.”

He swore. “the shop’ll be closed in the mornin’.”

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

“Santa” checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad’s gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.

If my best friend died,

I would run to the other end of town

and back, until the soles of my shoes

became my feet and my shirt melted into my skin.

I would burn every calorie of every piece of

chocolate I ever ate while discussing

PMS with him.

 

I would go to Gov Cup and order a chai tea

and try every flavor in single shots in different cups.

I would flirt with the barista as if to

cheat on our relationship that never happened because

we would end up killing each other.

 

I would write a poem where every line was an inside joke,

and all the words would be five syllables long

and only be found in the OED.

I would shout utterly vulgar phrases from the bus stop,

(but only in Greek, Spanish, and Russian.)

 

I would stay up late with his other best friend and say

absolutely nothing.

Because my ashen clothing,

my decreasing chocolate supply,

my counter-top full of espresso shots,

my affair with the barista,

my tirade at the bus stop,

even my inside joke of a poem

would fail him.

The windows thought they knew what rain sounded like,

They did not know it sounded like men falling from the sky,

Quiet men in trench coats, ties, and bowler hats,

Standing straight up like pins,

So they’d fall that much harder,

Staring off into space as if falling from the sky

Was a perfectly normal way to go to work.

Owners never light them well enough

Patrons tend to favor bigger cars,

With darker windows.

That could hide terrorists,

Kidnapers,

Monsters,

Dragons,

Even street rappers.

A health teacher told me once,

To carry my keys barred when I walk out the door,

As if that would stop a dragon.

But maybe it would stop a street rapper.

The tour bus rolled to a stop but didn’t open its doors quite yet. Shadows rustled behind shaded windows, eagerly anticipating the stop. Meanwhile the engines whined and hissed, before finally settling into silence. A hawk cried through the sky as it glided on drafts of air. On the streets below vendors displayed their wares for all potential customers to see. Finally the doors opened, and the rustling increased.

First out came the tour guide, a short woman with curly hair, sunned skin and a crooked nose. After her streamed a single file line of men and women glancing about with their eyes and their camera lenses. The line collapsed into a swarm of eager eyes and chittering mouths. They half-listened with their ears while they half-watched the world around them through the lenses of their cameras.

I on the other hand, ate my fallafal and pita bread as I tried to shut out the noise. With my feet planted on the sidewalk, my eyes took in the two streets, the alley way on across the street, and the door two booths away. Even when on vacation I couldn’t help but identify all the possible exits. Glancing at my makeshift meal, I tried to block out what had become instinct.

One bite of the crunchy treat and I wondered if someone had poisoned it.Sighing, I tossed my meal in the trash and pulled out my camera. I snapped a few pictures before I realized I had been searching for evidence. Evidence of what? A stray cat sitting by the bus? The man with the hair gelled so heavily I could snap needles off of it? The girl with a bomb strapped to her chest? ….

So much for a vacation.

Basically, when you encounter a suicide bomber, you have one of three options. You can run, you can scream, or you can try to stop the bomber, all of which will makes the girl to pull the trigger. You could shoot her hand off, but there’s no guarantee that one shot will take out both hands at the same time, and it only takes one hand to trigger the bomb.

If you have rifle loaded with disruptor shells, you can hit the trigger with a casing filled with water and avoid igniting the explosives. Though, if you’re on vacation overseas, airport security usually removes this option , and you’ll be lucky to even make it to your destination. Liquid nitrogen could be used to freeze the wires, and disable the triggering system, but good luck finding that in a street market. You could put pressure on her coratid artery, but you might have trouble getting close enough to her neck.

In some cases the bomber will choose to use a wireless trigger because they allow more subtlety before the blast. This counts in your favor because a wireless signal is a lot easier to disrupt than a wired one. You could call a bomb squad, but that takes too much time. Thankfully, when vacationing in a tourist trap, satellite dishes with strong broadcast signals aren’t too hard to come by. All a spy has to do is call the nearest TV news station, and wait for the reporters to take the bait.

Within a couple minutes they’ll come roaring through in her van, eager to broadcast the news first. They’ll park their van, bust out the cameras, and turn on their satelite router. The actual difficult part is getting the trigger from the bomber’s hand before the news crews leave. I prefer the subtle approach. Simply sneak up on her using the reporters as body shields, and grab the trigger.

Of course, if the mob of reporters knock you into her, things get a bit more complicated. You’ll have to move quickly to knock the trigger away from her hands as you tumble to the ground. And once the press vultures get close enough, they’ll likely send the trigger skittering into a mob of tourists, allowing you to disable the bomb.

And once you can get away from the reporters, and the wannabe bomber, you can enjoy a fresh serving of fallafal, and hope it isn’t poisioned.

For a moment I couldn’t see anything; the light had left so many purple and green spots in my eyes. I glanced back toward the elevator, trying to ride my head of the dull ache. Who knew that elevators could leave me with a hangover? A few moments passed and the dull ache waned, and I shakily stood up. How could I ever guess an elevator would irk my fear of heights?

I guess I found it most odd that the elevator doors never closed, even after all that time, until after I stepped out of the elevator. Thirteen steps out of the elevator, and the doors snapped shut, and the elevator, shaft, ropes, and all dropped through the floor. Curious, I turned around and walked back the way I came, and peered into the hole. Heat blasted my face so intensely that I couldn’t open my eyes. Glancing upwards, and I saw clouds and heard birds singing.

Rubbing my eyes, I explored the thirteenth floor. So far, besides the creepy elevator, everything seemed pretty normal. The elevator opened  onto a hall wall, with office doors, windows, and brass name plates lining it on each side. I turned to my right and read the nameplates as I went by. They started out pretty normal as well. A doctor, a lawyer, a shrink had the offices closest to the elevator. The further I walked though, the stranger the occupations of the owners of these offices became. Frame thrower inspector, balloon blower, professional lip-syncher, the name plates read. Finally, I reached a door with a profession I couldn’t ignore: straight-jacket tester.

I leaned my ear against the door and listened. Inside I could hear singing, off-key, but clearly someone at least tried to sing beyond that door. Knocking on the door, I listened more. The singing stopped.

“Wash your elbows before you enter, please.” The voice requested.

As I blinked in confusion, a slot opened up next to the doorknob. Like a drive-up window at a bank a canister popped out of the slot. Inside the canister I found a washcloth and some hand sanitizer. Shrugging, I squeezed a dab of the anti-bacterial gel onto the cloth and rubbed my elbows. A camera over head buzzed curiously as it watched my progress.

“Thank you!” The voice chimed.

And then the door opened.

I’ve never been superstitious. Sure, I always think twice before walking under a ladder, but it’s not because I believe in bad luck. It’s part of the reason why I’ve never understood the lack of a thirteenth floor in a building. Even when they change the floor numbers, there’s still a thirteenth floor, it’s just misnamed. I hate rising past the thirteenth floor for this very reason.

So one day I stood in an elevator of a building that reportedly lacked the unlucky floor. My eyes stared at the buttons in boredom, wishing I had laser vision so I could make the buttons melt. At least that would be entertaining. 9….10…..11…12….13….I blinked. That 13 button hadn’t been there a second earlier. The elevator continued to rise.

Frantically I pressed the 13 button, but of course the elevator had already passed it. Finally, the door opened to the floor I originally chose, but now I had changed my mind. I immediately pushed the door close button, to the dismay of the person wanting to enter the elevator car. I pushed the 13 button, and the car dropped. I had to hold onto the wall, and sit on the floor for fear of being thrown.

With a final lurch the car stopped, and the elevator chimed in snide victory. Shakily trying to stand up, I watched the doors open with a burst of light.

(This drabble continues a story about a disgruntled customer seeking to retrieve his computer from repair, which can be found here: http://fortyfifthparadox.com/?p=151

 

I sat in the airport trapped for hours, until cunning businessmen began to take advantage of the storm. Right and left, preying about the swarms of airline passengers like wolves in a chicken coop, men and women proffered their signs, offering rides to the nearest blizzard-free airport.  Likewise the stranded passengers rushed the drivers like gnats to a lamp on a summer night. My eyes settled on the nearest driver, and I moved as quickly as I could to a man taller than most cloaked in a long coat and long brimmed hat.

It didn’t strike me at first that I couldn’t see his eyes. I followed him out the doors to a newly cleared path to the parking garage, and we held eachothers arms that held our suitcases as the wind threatened to blow us over. Past shivering, past shaking, we stood numb as he unlocked his van and opened the doors for us. We shuffled inside and sat down, handing him our money and our blind trust that he would lead us to part of the way home.

None of us spoke much on the ride to the other airport. We sat, rubbing our hands together, too impatient to wait for the heaters in the van to thaw out our frozen meat. The driver, who introduced himself Poly Femus,  gave each of us a sandwich, soda, and chips to eat, and played upbeat songs on his stereo. Finally blissfully warm, we settled our seats, barely able to keep our eyes open. One by one we each succumbed to sleep, and as my eyes closed I glanced at a rear view mirror and saw a single eye underneath the driver’s hat.

I awoke alone in the van, save for the driver. Taking a deep breath of awakening air, I wretched at the coppery smell of blood. A brief glance about the van revealed the streaked seats and a lonely hand leaning precariously out the van door. Clearing his throat, the driver removed his hat, and my eyes confirmed what they had seen before…a rather human-looking cyclops. He asked for my name, and I told him I was no one. Poly Femus seemed rather sastified with that answer, as he licked his lips.

Something about him screeched more thirsty than hungry, I offered to share a soda with him as he digested my fellow passengers. We sat across from eachother, only a console and some seats seperating Poly Femus from his third course. I turned up the heat, offering him a candy bar and some crackers. The cyclops glanced at me suspiciously, munching on the offered junk food, listening to the radio. After some idle chatter I offered him more food, especially more sugar. Within minutes I had closed the van doors, letting it heat up the interior like an oven.

Finally, Poly Femus’s eyes began to drift closed, and I bolted from the van.