The Square Root of Pi

A strange, rambling tale with an expected outcome.

It's like a splinter inside your mind. Once it's caught there, it cannot be removed. Try to remove it yourself and see what happens. A splinter of sonic madness caresses my ears and it pushes me toward the plank. When you are at that stage, at that point in the event, it's known as being on the verge.

I am on the verge of madness.

It started like this: My monster is back in his prison cell and I am clutching a piece of immaculate brawn. The last remnants of creative juice stick to the white like glue does to macaroni shells. I wander away from my seat toward the refuse bin. The current sonic interlude is just finishing and the next wave is about to begin. I throw the waste away and move to the faucet with the everlasting luster and the lifetime guarantee. As I cleanse my hands of emotional filth, a maddening noise sends me reeling.

Reeling into the void called insanity.

I run back to the computer but I cannot put my hand upon the devil machine. It's beyond my understanding, beyond my knowing as to why this is happening. The noise is catchy in the way you get a baseball to your eyeball at ninety-eight miles an hour. It's catchy in a menacing yet melodic way.

I don't want to know anything about El Paso.

I don't want to know about going downtown.

I don't want to see the river bend.

Is it the guilt? I am guilty of being stupid, but is it worth the torture?

My biology causes my eyes to expel a salty liquid. I enter catharsis, my arms wave around violently and I stand on my tiptoes. I swear I could be possessed by a demon that is somewhat partial to Eastern Bloc ballet. My eyes see things that even an acidhead wouldn't see in the worst of trips.

A busload of malevolent youngsters salute me in single-finger fashion.

The scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz buys a bottle of butane from a street vendor.

I see Britney Spears-inspired waistlines and Orange County-inspired pleated skirts.

I hear suburban rap wannabes recites the vitriol from a pair of demented circus freaks.

I think to myself like Louie Armstrong would.

I am damaged goods and I support ugly trends.

That's not Louie Armstrong, but the prose of hipsters who have major character flaws. Metaphorically speaking, those hipsters are far from being tragic.

I am the tragic hero in this piece. I am the one who is so hard done by.

The bad trip ends and I shake my head in a very virulent manner. I regain my sense of space and time and I stare at the white wall straight ahead of myself. The mug of yours truly graces the empty space. I see my flaws before me and it frightens me harder than the gravest case of spontaneous human combustion on record.

My emotions immediately combust when the bridge of the song comes on. I need to release myself from the insanity. I run headfirst into the mirror and I shatter it upon impact.

I wonder sometimes, why am I so irrational? I'm more hard off than the square root of pi.

The glass is embedded in my skull and the blood is dripping from my wounds. And yet the pain remains. I smash my head into the wall one time, two times, three times, maybe more. Maybe less even.

I could be yawning because I am tired. I should've gone to bed awhile ago.

I am snarling because of the torment I inflicted on myself. I made a small mistake and I went off the deep end for absolutely no reason.

I blame it on a fundamental flaw in my character. That flaw is called a fucked-up mind. There is no cure for the condition. There is no therapy to mask the symptoms.

With a force that could move mountains of s**t, I contuse my cranium with another succession of heavy blows. An entire trauma squad would have to stop my obviously destructive behavior. With a sudden burst of creativity, I take a gander at the patio door in my living room.

With a constitution that no other human could possess, I pull a Johnny Knoxville by scampering toward the plate-glass door. I run head-on into the window and it shatters under my more than two-hundred pounds of fat, tissue and muscle. The glass immediately blinds my vision and leaves large scale lacerations on my bare chest and arms. There is no more pain because my endocrine system is pumping out the adrenaline at full-throttle, so far wide open.

I now realize something. I live just a couple of degrees below the forty-ninth parallel and this terrain is in the seasonal deep freeze. We were in the middle of an extreme winter weather advisory. I have no shirt on, no shoes on, no socks on, and no coat on. I am a model that all children should follow in regards to proper outdoor and indoor behavior.

Remember kids, whenever you hear a song that drives you insane, smash your head into a mirror and bang your head against the wall as many times as you can before you black out. From there, run outside when it's forty below while ignoring the wind chill and without the proper clothing so you can freeze to death in quick succession.

I just did, don't you want to grow up to be just like me?

Just like a sack of colorful candy-coated M&M's.

I am damaged goods that have become ugly trends.

I should be yawning and I should be snarling but I am now a human Popsicle. I didn't feel the effects of the flash-freezing. All I know is that I'm stuck in permanency and I am seeing a white light. I still hear the song in the background so it must be my dirge, my funeral song.

Suddenly, without warning or remorse, the light turns from white to red and I comprehend the meaning of my current state. This is my one-way ticket to hell, punched by my final selfish act. Suicide is probably the most mortal of all mortal sins.

I land on my feet and I see a man with a red pentagram on a baseball cap. He has an unmistakable ponytail that floating behind his head. He has a goatee that has gone without a shave for sometime. He is rail thin and gaunt like Marilyn Manson's skeleton. In a demonic tenor, he informs that I'm here for the eternal duration. I can't deny the mistakes I made and I can't escape the regret that I caused to myself and others.

I guess my actions did have consequences.

I should have gone to bed and I should've not played that song five thousand times in a row. If I did that, then maybe life would have been better for me. I guess help should always be sought in cases like mine. I regret my actions like everybody else around me down here.

And the words, "One day in El Paso" greet me every time I wake up on the shores of the lake of fire. I always start my days of everlasting suffering and torment this way.

After I yawn and after I snarl, I pay respect to the irony of my condition.

There is a fire in the hole.

Author's Note

Please be kind, and thank you for reading and reviewing.

Reviews

[TLK]

It is true. All human error lies on the internet, ready to infect the eager mind with indolence.

I thought this was worthy of a poem: Just like a sack of colorful candy-coated M&M's / I am damaged goods that have become ugly trends."


I also thought that "Suicide is probably the most mortal of all mortal sins" could become "the most IMmortal of all mortal sins"... it sounds good but I'm not sure it makes sense.

[roarke]

Lots of stuff here. Great expression, great visual painting. Strong emotional/intellectual directions. And the the creative talent, the synthesis of piecing all these stimulus together into a flowing prose of explanation.

So mathematically, if Pi hasn't been definitively calculated yet, seemingly infinite itself.... can you calculate a square root? I'm showing the ignorance of the opposite side of my brain, the other bb in the bathtub.....

This is gripping, grasping, fighting for finger crevices on the slippery slope of the rock wall. Clutching a piece of the "immaculate brawn" with a strangle hold. Stare it down. Look straight into those bestial eyes and harden, steel your focus. The whimpering will soon start. then whip that sniveling creature and ride him through more great writes like this one. Bravo.

[Ronn Michael Salinas]

hahaha "Johnny Knoxville" oh man

[Daniel Atkinson]

Packed with great metaphors and amazing descriptions, which is what I'm all about.

"I see Britney Spears-inspired waistlines and Orange County-inspired pleated skirts."

I try to sound like this, but I think I always end up coming off as pretentious. You, on the other hand, pull the feeling off very well, and maintain it through the whole piece. Very well done.