Light Bulbs

Light Bulbs

At the bottom-most step of a squatter’s staircase you look down and left. An upside down cockroach carcass assaults your optics. Your little violated peepers gag and climb the jaundiced sheet rock away from the pulse-less pest. What to your wondering eyes doth appear, but three disheveled dimmers standing beveled and erect, looking as vacant as the house you’ve found them in. You consider your surroundings and make a mental note of how the marrow in your bones feels. No worries, it feels as it should, but the fact that your senses are heightened to the point of marrow awareness is somewhat odd and directly relates to the nefarious nature of your location. All things considered and mulled you haul a tiny and folded piece of paper from your tight thigh pocket. Dutifully, your hands go to work opening the note like a cagey Christmas. As your digits do their dubious deed your mind moons about somewhere less ominous. How did you get here? What is your purpose? Is there the possibility that this moment could alter the destiny of each and every one of us? More than likely you’ve been pilgriming for the answers to such riddles since your past life. But the fact of the present is you are still as clueless as a tequila hangover. In truth, the last thing you remember is peering through your watery cocktail as if it you’d just been convinced the world was flat. You were drugged my friend, drugged, and now the surrogate universe where you’d stayed in and played cribbage with your lonely roommate seems like a silky heaven. After assaying your formally canned clue you bewilderedly survey the vertical footfall that affronts.

Formally canned clue reads:

“The three switches you witness correspond to three lights in the room at the top of the stairs. You may turn up and down each switch as many times as you deem necessary, but you may only enter the room once. Which switch couples with which bulb? If you can illuminate (pun intended) the correct answer and divine the logic you’ll be freed and consequently rewarded with a pickle for the pickle you’ve escaped. God speed.”

Artlessly you look for a seam at the nadir of the door and wildly flip each switch. “No seam!” You reckon to the omnipresent void. (Insert inward thinking voice here*) “So a pickle is part of my carrot to crack this confounding nut! I don’t like pickles, carrots or nuts! How about a jug of water? I feel like a desert on the coast of panic!” You pull a punctuation of gesture from its pack; light it, smoke it, and unbend. Spraying a frustrated exhale through the smoky helix that lifts from your provisional sixth finger you spit up the steps and curse the whole scene.

Somewhere behind a damnable door adorning the address 666, Satan, Lucifer, IBlis, Mara, Hades, and Set all sit an a circle guffawing and pulling straws to see which will cajole for your soul.

A schism in your gnostics uncurls and you implore the numen of nicotine for resolve. The clip from your counselor rushes toward the filter and nudges between your fingers in a heated hurry. A remote recollection crops up: Ernesto, the 70 year old Peruvian dish washer you once worked with who smoked his “cigarrillos” in two drags. “It’s better this way. See, like a picnic?” His English was surely out to lunch. With old Ernesto on the mind you can’t help but hatch the image of that inch long cherry sizzling down to his roughened wet fingers, that 20 second lung exhumation that always awed his audience, like 50 clowns climbing out of a Volkswagen. My gods, those two puff heaters!

Your internal dialogue is suddenly arrested. The free arsonist betwixt your miffed members gives a fleeting singe. An ouch is followed by a pot boiling sense of verisimilitude. One might say the allegorical light bulb in your brain became abuzz. Now, in the ostensible know, you again light up – as this will take a few minutes- switch up, and still trapped, simper.

Brandon LaPrad Bye

Alphabet Soup

‘Alphabet Soup’

A: The nervous valedictorian whose never had to wait in line: an obnoxiously pragmatic symbol of standard.

B: This buttery consonant either capitol or lower case, always gives me a secret tickle shiver when written. God bless you B, you’re so debonair.

C: The only child, the spoiled brat of the group, the corrupt and callous pit of a Washington cherry. Marked by delusional confidence and malcontent. C, you deserve yourself.

D: About as much insightful motion as a four sided wheel. Sterile.

E: E is one of the elders, a real vet. Festooned with the elegant laurels of a life well lived. Proud of convention and down with pretension says E.

F: A glyph of deviance whose forward nature often unearths discord. This filthy, faintly sinister, lewd mess up is the ominous figure that all the little lower case letters are advised to steer clear of.

G: G and E were high school sweethearts, got hitched at 18 and still look in each other’s eyes like new lovers. G is prudent, yet resolute, zealous, but blasé. A gallant pillar of principal.

H: We don’t see H all that often because H spends most of the time in the gym toning that classic palindrome look. A real blue-collar, proletariat work-horse that likes books about war and talking dirty in bed.

I: This is a prim and pernickety, self- seeking super model with the IQ of a pear. Slow-witted sweetness.

J: With aesthetic grace and salacious subtext, this tenth character is surely trying to break your heart. J is kind of an elitist but has the wherewithal to be so. An impulsively confident consonant. Proclivity for J.

K: K carries around an anxious nerve, which may be credited to prescription abuse. Comically intrusive, however a serious sanguine. This social casualty is buckling under the pressure of phonetic rehab.

L: Standing tall with lasting class, L is a bona fide humanitarian, a dyed in the wool sage, and irrefutable hero.

M: Adorably modest freckles paired with strawberry blond hair, that’s M. I had a crush on M in the 3rd grade. With an innocent and naively acute sense of humor, M is a gem.

N: If M is feminine, than N is her fraternal twin brother. Like M, N doubles as another member of the cast, Z: whose slick, arcane front rubs off on its vertical cousin.

O: The most orgasmic of all the vowels. This voluptuous friend is the only one to bridge the integer grapheme gap, a special feature indeed. O has a jovial, impassionate soul that quite honestly makes me want to hang myself in a shower stall. Oh, the a-cynic void.

P: P tries too hard to fit in. Not the last kid picked, but close. Underneath, co-dependence and insecurity plague P’s fragile spirit, while on the surface a cheerful, flamboyant facade is all over the show.

Q: An undeniably refined specimen. Q has a sizable conceit that demands notice but ironically is the letter least penned in troop 26. Perhaps born in France, maybe the northern Rhone region, where the Viongnier grape grows almost exclusively. A floral white wine, with notes of over ripe apricots and an over ripe attitude if you ask me.

R: R always has racy, prophetic opinions, but can’t remember where its drink is. Down in the southern cockles of R there is a clear propensity for immoral and guiltless dispositions. This cleaver renegade has the coolfiery fervency of a radish.

S: Charming in spite of that swank, S is a natural seducer. Odds- on S wears a sultry red dress and pumps even to a baseball game. Kisses like a stripper and rocks socks in the buff. A clear-cut metropolitan slut.

T: Kind of an alphabetic chameleon. Maybe the outdoorsy type, or maybe a chaps sporting Texan spitting at a rodeo. Perhaps the tyrannical tribal head of an ancient civilization that sparred its empire to collapse. In any case, T is a mystery to me.

U: Although four blocks down, U pulls at the coat tails of Q like a begging child in the check out line of a busy grocery store.  Possible the least pleasing letter to pen, U is an unstable, wobbling joke. No doubt T and V shove it back and forth like a rocking horse. Poor U.

V: Goose, up, two olives, slightly dirty, ice on the side. This one here was born at the top of the corporate ladder, no climbing required.  A power suit, the daily news and a cup of brew illustrate this capitalist viper quite well.

W: W played football with G at one of those proverbial ivy institutions and has since raised a family in an old house on the hill, slogged in law, then became a selectman or some small scale political figure.

X: The grim reaper in this class of 26. X is a variable that certainly marks the spot. Its pornographic persona makes Y a little uncomfortable, or maybe a little aroused.

Y: Give me a Y! Cartwheeling, and cheering, and tumbling its way down to the end of the list, this one’s favorite color is clear.

Z: Zipping and zigging and zagging around the bowl, Z is undoubtedly the fastest kid in the cluster. The cat who came to school just for lunch who now sweet talks all the freshman college girls into some sexual positions, but never any emotional investment. High five Z, but you may want to check for an STD.

Brandon LaPrad Bye