Miracle

Very surreal ... the jokes might just go flying over your head! Don't feel bad. The story was inspired by mushrooms and other light drug use.

Miracle

“Raise two to the twenty-sixth power and multiply by the number of characters in a book and you have your answer,” he said. The problem was how many monkeys it would take to write Moby Dick if they all banged on a keyboard for, say, twenty-six million years.

  “No,” said the student, “According to the Theory of Relativity, it is depending on the speed at which the monkeys will travel.”

  “Information does not propagate for fast-moving objects.”

  “The monkeys are the information!”

  “Then they cannot be banging on a keyboard, Sean.”

  Silence.

  “It all depends on the shape of the universe,” the student said. “They may be banging on a keyboard between certain galaxies.”

  The teacher said a prayer and turned to the blackboard, which exploded and fell backward through the wall into a new room.

  “SO WENT THE MILITANT AGGRAVIST THROUGH THE WALL,” said No One as the teacher stepped through the threshold into outer space which sucked most of the courage out of his daydream, the vacuum of the classroom now being inhospitable.

  The other students weren't paying attention or even floating. It was Sean. The teacher had become a giant head inviting him through the hole as had become of the blackboard, and Sean could understand very clearly that he would be failing this course. He tried to return to his desk but inertia repelled it. The next question was why would they be skipping lunch, to which the teacher had a very good answer. But he woke from the daydream.

  “I'm famous.”

  Take a shot, you're not in high school. It was most assuredly all of the Red Bull. You aren't dreaming, and it's not real. Forget about it, take a sleeper nut and paw it inside your cheekbones for the winter.

  All of this was going through my head as I woke up that morning, and the sheer complexity and dread of the thoughts which so instantly found me, and their incurable nature helped me feel utterly helpless of the situation. I prepared my thoughts to say: “and about the diploma; I never got one.”

  But really I just missed the graduation ceremony and I felt that would be the end of me finally, if not a guilt of smoking instead or worse, lung cancer.

  “Hi,” would've been nice at that point.

  It happened to me that the worst part of taking command of this bigship could only be the waking dreams which were not floating but sinking into a sharp ice like finally dying and learning that death never happens, but something else.

  It was a makeshift solution and I wouldn't be able to speak out loud without a seriously powerful hit of weed. Zoo food for breakfast and possibly a seriously powerful hit of weed.

  “I'm taking a hi-,” I puffed it up later and then pronounced the “t-t-t-t-t” as I blew it out again under a bridge of high-beams which supported our roof. Naturally afraid, I did have a nice home, and I didn't have to pay 'ze bills as they say. “And thank you.” Blasé.

  She was a f**k-up. I've never actually met her, but her presence was so strong after my marijuana injunction that I couldn't help but feel like some kind of futuristic weapons designer installing the ultimate kill-button one of my inventions. Kill as in an off-switch. She was the kill-button to my warhead. Someone approached me under the bridge. “And I'm not talking about you!” 'Course it was No One. He was always there.

  Off. Off. Off. Come off of it, do you remember when you said that? “I'm fine,” like three days ago, “but the button is jammed.” And they misheard you being Guitar Center employees with blown eardrums, mislabeled as they are?

  The elephant poster was coming March 1st.

  The camera was going on sale March 1st.

  You've already listed the Nintendo.

  The game shipments will come by March 14th.

  There, inventory's done. Now what about that surprise? Hello? I looked to the window of my living-room under the bridge. Neighborhood animals like mail-women and cyclists peeked through. Or peaked through rather. Damn, it was good weed. I really was accepted by them, “and I accept you,” I said laughing. I really fit in. I really didn't have any problems. I really was happy. I really was a contributing member of society. And I really, really was stoned. “And I said,” blasé I said this, “I said:

 

BEEKEEPER WILL FULFILL THE ARCHING RED NOSES, BEING STUNG AND UNDERWEAR.”

 

Fun-omenal. And that's what I paid for, in the weed, twenty dollar nuggets shipped from Colorado. Dunno how many times I'd made the shipment. I made if after I made my last twenty dollars mowing the lawn, but it was winter so my last twenty dollars usually had something to do with a savings withdrawal, which I was apt to skip under most circumstances. And I should quit talking to myself but the pleasure of company is ne'er wasted on the lonely. I make a good companion: I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm a nice guy. I even have a girlfriend. She's real, this time. And I mean this time that this example of a girl is a real person, not imaginary like the one who incidentally had left when I figured out my dream. It still haunted me and it still would, but by then I'd be cuddling, and truly: I really was happy. But that ignores the principle of confusion which dominated my sensitive personal life and the bipolar throwaway cure for the thoughts really only shuddered at the prospect of tomorrow, and if the weed would help again, and if my invisible friend would stick around (what with me figuring it out this morning and all;) and it ignores the naughty thought that I hadn't solved anything, anyway. Is that simple enough?

  Movement was difficult. I wanted to move away that is. But movement was difficult too, unless I heaved a great guffaw into the direction of my desktop computer and lurched over to that and got online to talk to my girlfriend. I lit up a green banana cigarette first. The pack is green, I mean. It was just adolescent depression, it felt like at that moment. But I thought, you're staying in a good mood because you know you could lose it any moment.

  Mom was coming over and I just knew.

  The girl was logged in which I have always been endeared by. So, taking a long drag, I humped a few sentences in place like: I've had a rough time without you all these years, ad nauseum. All correct sentences grammatically and philosophically.

  Yes, my friends were all depressed and that's what I missed about them. I envied their approach to life: work, play, no computers. It was brilliant. I have no potential without them but they live so far away. How much did I have to pay for each of their friendships? Nothing, except a counter-intuitive few days overcoming ADHD, which was really just me forgetting I had it or displacing the diagnoses to something less real. I don't have ADHD, and I wouldn't have told you I did before the therapy, either. But like ascending the Ziggurat of Castrations and Decapitations, I needed to accept it and move on. Found out I was a ragdoll. It got me a girlfriend.

  I'm coming up with riddles. The rule is that you are the butt of the joke. And most answers work, like, “it wasn't me,” which is a perfect example, I thought, really clever and I had to write it down.

  That's so you.

  There's a good example. “So you” are the butt of the joke. That's the answer. The riddle is called “Meta Jokes.” I came up with it under the heading of “Meta,” which is the only heading, and “Meta Jokes” is the only item under that heading. “A more complex answer to the riddle is that,” I said.

  The paradigm for all of us was vocabulary and the next one was mathematics. Like an ended friendship, we really didn't want to give up “vocabulary” as our paradigm, and lamented fruitlessly over thesauruses as we tried to find some value in mathematics. But like vocabulary, and the paradigm before it (touch,) we could only appreciate it after dropping all other paradigms and studying deeply into the new one.

  Really needing a response to my chat messages, I made a call to my girlfriend. I shouldn't tell you her name. Told her to “swing” by, blasé, which she liked, and she rode her bike over and we made my mom who was coming over breakfast.

  I'm twenty-three and I live with my grandparents. They're at work and sleeping, respectively.

  Breakfast was confiscated swiftly by the munchkins, or, us, and my mom. I found the high was wearing off and went straight for my girlfriend's lap.

  “Weed.”

  She knew, and we left, like almost carrying each other, like kangaroos. We entered my bedroom and I said, “And it was totally insane,” as if I was finishing a conversation, then I cut myself off. “Hello?”

  “Hello?” She was so cute.

  “I missed you last night.”

  “Hm?”

  “...missed you last night.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” she did trail off and it was fine. I loved the way she pronounced “hm.”

  “Out the window to your left you will see--” Pause. I said, “And at the bottom of the room a bed might be found, and underneath that my--” I looked at her. “Answers?”

  “A: unearthly miscreants. B: paraphernalia,” she said.

  “Yes and yes,” I said. “Good job. And we're about to be stoned off our asses on Zoo York brand mari-dopey-wa which should indeed set us on a fast track to sanity.”

  “You're so off the wall today,” she said.

  I was truthfully denying that I was completely rockers. I was a little unique in that I displayed my insanity at the drop of the hat, in fact in front of people whose respect I really needed, and I suffered a lot for that reason. But the weed would definitely help. We needed to go to the store to find a “saucerful of secrets,” or the supplies for mushroom tea. We had the mushrooms but no kettle and no . .. Well, what did we need?

  We needed to strain the tea from the psilocybin mushrooms after we brewed it. And we needed to sweeten the tea for my girlfriend, for sure. So some kind of small strainer and sugar. We wanted all new stuff so that whatever drugs the last person in my house used wouldn't mix in with the shrooms if we used something from my kitchen. It was paranoid but it worked.

  Rest, beat beat. “...a totally incredible experience,” I finished. I had actually told an entire story this time. I don't remember exactly what I said but something like, “I could feel the vacuum of space and it was...”

  I think she was genuinely impressed. That's what I was going for after all. We put on green and yellow shirts, respectively, and wheeled around on our bikes to the hardware store. I thought of lube and how we needed it. Jelly? Does jelly work? I mean, it's oil-based, right? But would we get a great rib of chemical plant air when we got down on each other? F**k, that sounded bad. Jeez, I almost wish I hadn't thought of that.

  Home.

  Alchemy.

  And we're sitting there with lips touched to each others' respective brims, shaking with laughter, when we chug it in two gulps each.

  “Well, that's most of it.”

Author's Note

First draft

Reviews

[Brandon S. Whitten]

A Shamanic feel to this story. I was amused by the humor. A brilliant mind you have. Good read and write.

[Jordan Jones]

Thanks B.W. although I find it hard to believe you are a grandfather

[Brandon S. Whitten]

Thanks, my stepdaughter's son