Brain beach

Someone or some ones came to me in the night. They gently tapped about the circumference of my skull until they could remove the top bit like a cap. Then, they reached in and took my brain. They got in their car, and drove to the beach, with my brain in a cooler rested upon a few water bottles and an egg salad sandwich.  They got to the beach, they drank their water, they ate their egg salad, and they rolled my brain out onto the beach. They built a sand castle around it, then played Godzilla and knocked the castle down. They did it again, and again. When the hunk of fat was thoroughly engrained with the tiny rocks, they put it back in their cooler and headed back. They came to me again, and replaced my brain, now gritty and scratchy. They welded the cap back on.

 

Of course, I remember none of this. All I have to go off of is the feeling in my skull, and this huge disfiguring scar.

BEAST

I found myself in a corner. Turning to look see what had me pinned, I could smell the odor that gets on your hands when you hold a handful of change in a sweaty palm. I knew exactly what the beast was.

It’s flesh made of green paper that wasn’t really paper, but more sort of a thin denim with men’s’ faces and numbers of all sorts printed on it. It’s eyes, which glowed like mosquitoes that someone had set aflame, were each a golden coin that I immediately recognized as the new line of presidential dollars. The foot that had me pinned as well as its other three feet were made of burlap, with big cartoonish dollar signs printed on them. I could only assume that the burlap be filled with gold bricks.

When it snarled, which it did on a non-stop basis, I could see it’s bank-teller-pen-with-the-ball-chain-still-attached teeth and its cashier’s-check tongue. With every snarl pennies came forth from the mouth, some casually dripping from the sides and down it’s chin while others came at me like rockets.

I knew it didn’t want to kill me. These types of beasts rarely do. More often than most, they just like to play with your life for a while, like it’s their little toy mouse.

I’m starting to learn that playing dead isn’t the solution. Fight your way out, I tell me. And so I listen.

Poor Buttercup

I picture a wall nigh ten feet in front of the speeding horse I ride. As that ten feet turns to zero, blood rushes through to my hands and I see the veins pulsate over my knuckles. There is no flash of my life. The horses face flattens against the wall in slow motion, with every cracked bone, broken tooth, and other detail enhanced like it was remastered.

 Poor Buttercup.

 As the horse has now stopped moving and I haven’t, I feel myself leaving the saddle, my face accelerating towards the wall at speed. Fruitlessly, I start to throw my pulsating hands up to protect my precious nose, but it’s too late. Fruitfully, I close my eyes. Again, in slow motion, I feel the pressure on my nose and cheek, knowing soon that I’ll hear cracks and pops and the pain that follows will be devastating. Something interesting happens. The pressure is suddenly relieved, in the same fashion that the pressure on a pencil might be relieved just as it punctures a piece of paper.

 My body feels like it’s being drawn through a sheet of water. The edge of what I can only assume is reality is peeling down me as I continue with my horseless forward momentum. Just as I feel that edge lapse my feet I find the will to reopen my eyes. The first thing I gaze upon is my hands, as they’re right in front of my face. Blue. Hazy. Translucent. Odd.

 I realize now that I was several feet off the ground, being without a horse. I look down to discover no ground, and pause for a moment to discover no sense of movement. I turn back to try to decipher where I am or how I got here, only to find nothing. The same nothing that is everywhere else.

 Well. Shit. I wish I had a hamburger.

 And I have a hamburger.

Maybe it’s not so bad here.