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Written for a Creative Fiction class. Inspiration was the frustration one feels from an unanswered prayer.

It’s a cold, rainy night on the streets of Chicago"the kind of night you can see soul shadows just sleepwalking around with no umbrellas. The kind of night lonely lovers spend pining under porticoes making make-it-or-break-it prayers. Or, like my friend over there, just standing out on the corner under a street lamp, letting the pouring rain ruin a perfectly good suit. Joe Schmuck, I call him"it’s not his name, but it does. On these streets, at least; these burdened old, melancholy streets that feel like an arthritic old man plunking a slow, jaunty tune on a derelict upright, with buzzing street lamps flickering like hi-hats.

            How you doing? My name’s not important"all you’ve gotta know is I play a juicy ‘bone with a mute in both ends. That’s right, you’ll be hard-pressed to find tastier licks, except maybe if you keep your chops tight and your speech easy. I remember once I was jamming with my friend the Count, he stopped right in the middle of a rag"right in the damn middle!"and just sat there for a while, counting his teeth, one by one by eighty-eight. And he said"and I’ll never forget it"oh he said, “Sometimes the best parts of music are the bits in between.” And I took that to heart! I don’t play the Apollo much anymore, but when I do, oh it makes ‘em weep and gnash their teeth!

            I’m curious as you are, I’m sure, about my old friend over there. He’s been at that corner since before it started pouring, and it’s been pouring a while. He hasn’t done much these past few hours"just muttered a bunch, checked his watch a bunch more. He’s paced that sidewalk enough times to wear a gutter in it, where that rain collects. Rain, rain, that milky rain that hammers and pounds down like God’s judgment, or as much answer to a prayer as he’ll ever get. It’s hitting his head real hard now, the dome of a cathedral, and sloping down the eaves to be flung off. Weary for the lack of a portico, a sad son slips out of the cathedral in a hurry, stealing off into the night like a desperately whispered prayer.

            He waits for an answer, and there are crashing clouds. Crashing clouds there are, all around him crashing clouds, hiding Apollo from Delphi.

            Cursing to nobody but himself, he kicks the lamppost.

            Now his foot hurts. Obviously, because he spits into the rain through gritted teeth, “Jesus Christ!”

            Why do they do that? When they’re mad, I mean. He was a pretty nice guy, all in all"no need to boil him down to a thorn in your side, is what I say. And all these people nowadays just tossing his name around"can’t hardly swing a dead cat without hitting someone and making them shout out, “Jesus Christ!”"and to think when they shout it that he bounces off of trussed bedsheets and rips wildly through polite cafes and tumbles down the lonely, empty sheets that smell like tinny, grit-gray rain. How would he feel about that, do you think?

            Now he’s stepping into the alcove to answer a call. It’s a woman"it’s always a woman. Why is it always a woman? You can tell by the way he talks; even though he’s angry, it’s a soft anger. Like a mace wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket. You can tell so much from the way he talks. She’s the kind of woman he’d describe as pulchritudinous"beautiful, but not in any practical way. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

            Whatever she’s saying, he isn’t having it. In the middle of a sentence he abruptly hangs up. The sharp snap of his battered Razor tacks a sharp finality to it, though you can’t really hear it through the rain unless you’re listening real close. He sighs, stares out at the sky of crashing clouds. Crashing clouds like smog, maybe, choking him like the word asphyxiation does. Just like that word, like crashing clouds.

            He can feel us watching him, you know. Or he knows I’m here, at least, even if he can’t see me. Seems like I can never leave him alone He might not really think about you all that often, but he’s terrified me and all my hats. I like hats, you know. I feel like there’s only one way to really show someone’s true hues, and that’s what kind of hat they’re wearing. Like tonight, you see"perched on my sunny disposition is a helmet from a pubescent Vietnam vet. In a moment I’ll put on a tweed flat cap like that cabbie that passed a while ago. Ah, but you’d have liked to have seen me a few hours ago"I wasn’t wearing any hat. That’s when things get interesting.

            Oh, that’s weird. He chucked his phone into the road. Funny"it kind of skipped along, like he was skipping rocks on a lake. Now he’s shouting at the sky. His fist is raised. My friend’s not very smart, as you can see"that’s no way to talk to God. It’s not like God can’t hear you. All it does is make you angry, and that just blows.

            He’s running into the road now, red blood dripping down his chin. Wait, when did that happen? Did he get a nosebleed from yelling? That’s what I get for not paying attention, I guess. Good thing these roads are so empty at night, because he stopped less than half-way across. I feel like he was going to fall to his knees and cry or something, but he kind of just stopped, like a deer. Well, not quite like a deer. Deer only stop in the road for headlights, and he’s never been so lonely as when I’m around. I guess he stopped more like a heart-broken homunculus"heart-heavy with the terrible burden of life.

                       And above and all around him and within his ears and heart and mind there are crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and frothing crashing clouds undulating crashing clouds crashing clouds into surf crashing clouds crashing clouds and crashing clouds and into crashing clouds in shapes of hands and beams of light from crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds rain whipped and beaten into the air and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clouds and crahing clouds and crasing clouds and crashing clouds and crashing clousd crashing clouds and carshing cloud sand casrhing c louds a nd rcahs crashi ngcoulds nda carshing cdouls      a n d c r a s h i n g c l o u d s a n d c r ashaNDNDCRAHSing cldodsu carcuo lds c rarcas hcar rhacsh dnan crasshing clllouds adn ashcrngi clawuds cra&ingling cldouwdshahshs crahsgingashshsash claqudsashshsahsh qlgpgshgin&algidh sgiskagho&ilakjgncjkgaghoq ghlih hghi&hgsgajkgjcrshghsgh AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS  AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS  AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND CRASHING CLOUDS AND&and&and&and

           &and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&and&

            the air is awash with sounds right now, even in the dim hours of city night. The rain, obviously, is still drowning the air with petrichorless hues, but even more so does the cold, electric light have sound. And the smell of fall leaves, dampened by the pouring rain, blanketing writhing worms coming out to see what’s up in the wide cement desert, and the light of a cellphone scraping the concrete as it floats down the manmade river, and the feeling of falling but never quite falling. All their sounds mold it, you know.

            And he has his own silence too; in this moment I think he really understands what silence is. His quiet is suffocating, like cotton balls. Like having cotton balls stuffed down your trachea, so you can’t breathe. He’s choking on them slowly and insatiably, and he doesn’t really understand, drowning in misunderstanding. For him, this is the rest with a fermata smothering it. A bit of context: right before there was this totally tart alto sax and clarinet duet line that grew into this f*****g righteous, stank-face-inducing flat seven, augmented and suspended and over the second and fluid like a bright dark blue-violet wave crashing and sinking into pastel sand.

            That was it. That was the event, that chord, but this was after, and he was either waiting for the next chord or applause, or maybe Godot. That was a pretty good play, if you ask me. Pretty accurately shows you your own stupid soul. It’s weird, because I never really liked plays. They’re too much of stories for me, not enough music. So focused on the drama, with no real taste for it, no taste for consequence. They just kind of end with a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

            

Aha, you thought I was just going to stop right there, didn’t you? Jolt you to a stop like that, right? Nah, I’m just kidding with ya. That’s too cliché, even for a guy like me. Besides, is there really an end?