i wrote this live on twitter from 9:32pm to 10:35 pm on 28 July 2014
half the lights went out in the diner. a flat, warm sound covered the building, the parking lot. the soups glowed. my ears hummed.
elsa dragged her nails over the formica table while the vinyl booth beneath her groaned in sharp crashes of the bathroom mirrors shattering
the bus boy cowered in the dark corner as lightning struck, breaking out a soft rain. he doubled over.
he clawed at his apron, shook his head, moaned. the dirty dishes on the tray before him clinked and winked electricity
the middle aged woman in the grey pantsuit kept both hands on her table, harkening the divination of spiritualism. her tongue was sandpaper.
she glanced with two watery-nothing blue eyes toward the bus boy whose internal organs were pushing a putrid foam from his mouth
she had the compulsion to tap once upon his forehead, to make the irises crawl back to the front of his eyes, to make the lightning stop
she looked at her soup instead, in a peach bowl. and the torn corner of package of saltines. one large crumb trembling among many others.
elsa still scratched the table. it sounded like the slow unwinding of metal wire,-[SHEDDING THE MORTAL COIL, I'M SHEDDING THE]-except no one actually said it. only elsa looked at myself, rigid on the linoleum pathway between blocks of peach-coloured booths
the lights flickered fully out when the bus boy began vomiting up his own internal organs
still he managed to moan, attempting to wipe the dribbling stuff from his face with the soft cotton of his apron
his eyes shut once or twice, i saw, with great pleasure, as if he were only a small boy nestling against sun-warmed linen
the middle aged woman's mouth began to flatten out. to key to coy to twist to bitter to tack and stick.
"I feel like sand paper" she wanted to whisper to the UV light mass in the shape of a human sitting across the booth from her
"you're a splendid, splendid colour" she wanted to say to the place where it would've had eyes
she blocked out the sounds of the bus boy regurgitating himself on business grade carpet
-to reach for that light's hand
and, i had to admit, it was a splendid colour. the bluest black of a purple gold i had ever seen.
elsa rose. her limbs, each one, were missing links between us and the insects, the reptiles. she was going to glass them off, she said
7 rains followed while she was on the floor of the bathroom:
i heard a trumpet sound for each
i heard elsa, in the bathroom, turning half-snake, losing her face, grating on the glass, flashing white hot and coal black in tides
i heard the UV shape. it had an intention of making a new home in the belly of the bus boy, who had ceased moving
we watched helplessly as the UV light licked seeped spread itself over the booths like lava, heading towards the carcass
"i feel like sand paper" the woman kept wanting to say. if she could say it!--the UV light reflected against her eyes beautifully--
if she could just say it, maybe it would all stop.
I FEEL LIKE SAND PAPER, as if it was the demon giving up its name, as if power was in the meat of muscle pushing out words in an empty diner
as if cowering, as if stretching, as if magnificent flashes of light would follow, ending the humming drone, the lack of electricity
the UV light entered the bus boy
he glowed--it was marvellous. i have seen many marvellous things but nothing truly compares to this sort of possession--and began to move
up he came from his knees to his feet
up his spine rolled, vertebrae by vertebrae
and when the glow of him passed through his face, he opened his eyes, and then his mouth. and he asked for his mother.
the white snake that had once been elsa slithered from the bathroom door
she glistened in chips of mirror, smearing cold blood upon the ground from her wounds
she came to the feet of the boy
the boy, who was now the mass of UV light of the most beautiful colour i had ever seen, screamed inside the belly of the snake that had once been elsa for its mother
there was an elbow, and then a knee, and then the stretch of bulbous head against the stomach of the snake that had once been elsa
made a piece of shattered mirror upon the body of the snake that was once elsa shine, wink, explode
soon the struggling would stop. the white snake that had once been elsa looked at me, and then the woman, who was trying not to cry
soon she would be able to leave this place. soon she would be able to say--"the funniest thing happened at the diner today
i didn't have any crackers with my soup at all, and yet my mouth felt the driest it's ever been. it felt exactly like sand paper."
jacobvanloon
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