Overage

OVERAGE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The oil man poked the back yard until it looked like a sponge and everywhere he poked, black muck came to the surface. Dad looked like he had looked a few weeks after my little sister, Shirley, died.

"How much to get it out of the ground and get rid of it?" he asked the oil man. The oil man was young and skinny and wore a stained white jumpsuit with powder blue pinstripes. Except for his bright red cap, he looked like his job and his life had sucked the color out of him.

"Gonna run probably 'bout five bucks a gallon, I 'magine," he said, snorting as he wiped his nose with a finger.

"Five bucks? That's fucking robbery! I remember my uncle paying a buck twenty-five a gallon when he got oil in his yard!"

"Buck twenty-five was thirty years ago, maybe," the oil man said. "We got more work than we can handle nowadays. Everybody's got oil. There's only so much you can refine, before you gotta start finding places to put it."

"I'll haul it off myself thanks," Dad said. "Five bucks'll bankrupt me."

"I know how it is. It's bankrupting whole countries out there in the Mid-East. They're drownin' in the shit. Awright, you got my card if you need me, but the way things are goin' it might be up to six bucks next week."

"Six bucks my ass," Dad muttered.

"What are we gonna do, Dad?" I asked him after the oil man left.

"Your cousin's got a truck with a hose. We might be able to skim it off the top or something. Pay the refinery to take that much at a time and hopefully I won't have to go to the bank."

"Dad, the refinery pays people to burn it all in their cars and furnaces. With everyone burning as much as they can, we're destroying the world."

"Take a look around the yard, son. The world's already destroyed. All there's left to do is sweep it under each other's rugs."

How We Beat The Aliens

HOW WE BEAT THE ALIENS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

When the Oustratum were about to invade Earth we needed some good ideas and fast. The aliens were the most powerful beings we had ever encountered and we knew we couldn't outgun them. Passive aggression was our only hope. We would bend like the reed so as not to break like the oak. And once our cultures were thoroughly intermingled, clever humanity would destroy the Oustratum from within.

The first days were the hardest. The aliens struck hard, expecting us to put up a real fight. We did have a reputation as one of the fiercest races of the continuum. We could hardly contain ourselves. They destroyed our infrastructures first. Communications, roads, utilities. They were using our old war strategies against us. Quite considerate, if you think about it. We never had to live in fear of surprises.

They destroyed our food and water supplies next. This was going to be tough. The Oustratum actually grew a little nervous at how easily the campaign was going. They nearly shook themselves apart knowing our counterattack could occur at any moment. But we weren't ready for them yet. When the time came, it was going to be sweet.

We nearly lost it when they killed our mothers and aunties right there in front of us. We mentally swore gruesome revenges as they killed our children. They began destroying the rest of us in alphabetical order by the names of our shoe sizes. All the eights went first, then eight and a halves, eighteens, eighteen and a halves, elevens, and so on through the alphabet. Soon we were all dead.

Wait. That's not right. What were we planning to do at this point? We had something. The cultures weren't going to become any more intermingled than they were now, them covering the planet, us being extinct. I swear we had this whole thing thought out. It looked fricking brilliant in the Power Point presentation.

Dammit.

Something Is Wrong

Something is obviously wrong with blogger.com and once it lets me edit my posts again I'll try to clean up the mess below.

Life Was Lite, Life Was Brite

LIFE WAS LITE, LIFE WAS BRITE
BY Matthew Sanborn Smith

And then, suddenly, everything was Lite-Brite. Our entire world had become colored pegs on an unseeable black background. You'd think that insanity would overtake us all, but everyone seemed okay with it. Lite-Brite was pretty cool, after all. Irma looked at me with unnerving pink eyes. I plucked them out without a second thought.

She started screaming, "I can't see! I'm blind!"

I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, "Hold still, get a hold of yourself!"

From somewhere, the blue pegs that I wanted appeared in my hand, unglowing until I plugged them into her eye sockets. "Can you see now?"

"Yes."

"Did it hurt?"

"No." All the same, she hit me. "Don't ever do that to me again!"

"Sorry."

"My eyes. You changed them. You didn't like me the way I was?" Tiny little white pegs trailed down her cheek.

How could she see that? "I'll change them back, if you want."

"Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me ever again! How would you like it if I added more pegs to your dick and made it bigger?"

"Are you kidding? I'd love that. I might do that myself."

"Stupid men. You think everything is a joke."

She walked out of my life that day. I suppose I could have chased her, but by that time, my pants were around my ankles and I was lucky if I could walk, let alone run.

???????

I went to bed last night thinking that I missed a day of posting. I tried posting my story again and again with no luck - the page just kept loading, so I gave up. Today I see that it wound up posting eight times. I'm going to edit seven of them out best I can, though I don't think I can wipe out all traces of them. You'll probably still see a number of blank posts. Ain't technology grand?

On Benders As A Quest for Higher Consciousness

ON BENDERS AS A QUEST FOR HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Half-drunk, half asleep, one hundred percent in the moment. The only difference between you and me is that I'm in the moment on a different level. I'm experiencing this smoke-hazy conversation in the fourth dimension, and while it feels linear and fading to you, it's all there at once for me and I'm seeing all sides, through it and around it. Already, I'm embarrassed that minutes from now, I'll tell you twice that Southern Comfort mixed with Orange Crush tastes just like cough medicine. Two sentences in I say:

"Tell Susan you love her and put a bullet between Gabby's ears."

"What the hell are you talking about?" you ask. "I'm asking you if you wanna grab some burgers!"

"That's what you thought you were asking me over here." My pointer swoops up and under your left arm and behind your back.

"Dude, you are so fucking drunk!"

I ignore the rest of your conversation except to put my lines in where you'll need them. I swill some more cough medicine in the meantime.

"So what do you think I should do?" you say.

"Huh?"

"I'm asking you what I should do!"

I'm leaning back into a couch that I didn't know I was on. It's orange/brown and it stinks, but the stink is somewhere else for me, not in my nose, but in my ears, like I heard that it stinks and believed it without question. I whip my head back and forth trying to go someplace higher. And when I think I'm there, when I can't see you or hear the stink or feel the couch, I say:

"Man, I already told you. I've lived this conversation twice and I'm damned tired of it. Away with you."

#

Three quarters drunk and three quarters asleep, I'm a man and a half, staring off a pier into the black water twelve feet below. You're not that last one. I think sex with you. And your talk is so everlasting and so pervasive it has become my entire universe. I wasn't around when your speech began. I was born into it. It's the background noise of eternity. It fills ninety percent of my brain, leaving room for only the knotty boards pressing the metal buttons of some jacket into my heaving chest and the chilly ink below, which moves sometimes like I should be scared of it, but I'm not.

Your speech will be around long after I am in the grave. And I belch, what a pathetic existence I have. Everything I know is your speech and the button pain and the water and - did I just shit my pants? No, no, I guess not. I guess I'll find out in the morning.

I try to get one little piece of my brain to focus on what you're saying while the rest of my life is all about getting my big hulking body to roll over. Is there anything in the infinite reaches of your monologue about me shitting my pants? I follow here and there, understand bits of it. There's nothing I can gather that's relevant to my life. My pants must be okay. I forgot I was trying to roll over. I try again for about three-tenths of a second, barely enough time for a muscle twitch and then I let out a moan that rocks the world, but not in a good way.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" you ask in that girlish voice you use when you're a girl.

"How would you like it if the only constant in your universe wasn't even a speech about you? It's about somebody else entirely. I'm not Dave, I'm me. And I'm pretty sure me isn't Dave."

And then I vomit, and the ink below ripples at my command. I enjoy the power so much, I puke some more. It goes on like this for years.

"I mean," I continue as if nothing had happened, "I'm not even the center of my own universe. I'm some side character punished with existence!"

"You are one drunk mother fucker!" you say.

"Not yet," I say. Finding a ferocious strength I never knew I had, I reach for the half pint of Schnapps inside my jacket. Propping myself up on stinging elbows, I suck the plastic teat and wait to be transported somewhere better.

#

Fully drunk. Fully asleep. Why am I drunk in my dreams too? That isn't fair. I'm trying to reach a higher plane of consciousness here. Can't you stop the world from spinning long enough that I can make a single coherent thought?

So the world stops spinning. I go hurtling off into space.

"Damn you, Newton!" I scream, like he had something to do with it. And there you are. Washing over me, warm and thick like you're myself and you've always belonged here. I make a couple of kissy noises with gigantic lips and I settle down. Finally . . .

#

Not at all drunk. Not at all asleep. You are my world now, pain/nausea/notrightness. When my eyes meet open and swallow the walls of my vast, dull bedroom, I understand how full I am. I am everything there is.

And you are everything else.

BubbleRuth

BUBBLERUTH
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Ravi loved girls. Ravi loved bubblewrap. It only seemed right that Ravi would superlove a girl made out of bubblewrap.

He didn't want to sully his woman with used bubblewrap so he bought the new stuff from the pack and ship stores. Big bubbles for the overall form (he used a lot in the bosom area as it was one of his favorites), little bubbles for the details. It took a couple of tries, but he settled on rubber bands to supplement her shape. And, of course, hold her together. Staples had been so bad in so many ways. He woke up three times Monday night to check his scabbed mouth for the first signs of tetanus.

Wednesday night, BubbleRuth was born.

For the first half hour, he drove her down the lonely, unlit back roads of his little town with his hand on her knee, though she didn't really bend very well there. He played his cherished Air Supply mix CD and moved to her thigh.

Back at his pad (and he could say pad because she didn't judge) Ravi tore her clothes off (yes) and fondled her lumpy form, enraptured. He rubbed his body all over hers, did everything with her that he would with a real woman (yes). With the ultimate moment came a passion that made him leave sense behind. He had to have her firmness, squeeze it like it was meant to be squeezed: terminally. He arrived in a cacophony of ruptured flesh, a climax louder than any one moment of Chinese New Year.

The lights came on at the neighbor's house. Ravi leapt in terror and ran to the bathroom, BubbleRuth trailing behind. In mindless fear he tried to flush her mangled form down the toilet, causing a backup that flooded the bathroom and finally brought him back to reality. He sat on the edge of his tub, looked at BubbleRuth's remains, half in, half out of the toilet, and he wept.

Bubblewrap. Girls. The perfect mix? He thought not.

In Ravi's back yard there sits a simple marker: BubbleRuth, September 27th, 2006 - September 27th, 2006.

Ravi never married.

Sunday Dinner

SUNDAY DINNER
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Troy spent the days in the library, in a squared off chair of wood and yellow vinyl, driving himself insane. The place smelled dusty and the old air was thicker than outside, but things were a little better here in periodicals. His resident spot was in view of a plastic bust of Poe alongside the yellowing microfiche machine.

Josie had let him in and he was first through the door. Troy's torn and patchy backpack played its role as place keeper at his seat while he set to work. Out came his crumpled handwritten list.

"Bon Appetit, Apr. 2010, page 77." The issue had made its way onto the archive shelves, which saddened him. It was old and losing its scent. He flipped through the issue and found the ad he wanted. It wasn't even a food ad. It was an ad for a convection oven. But the oven baked cookies. Chocolate chip. Troy held the magazine away from him for a moment, took a big whiff of stale library air and let it out slowly. Then he buried his head in the issue and inhaled through his nose. There it was. It grew faint and this might be the last day he left the magazine on his list, but for right now, he caught the melty, oily aroma of the chocolate seeping into the still softish dough. "Jesus," he whispered. It was better than porn.

"O Magazine, Jan. 2011, page 133." This one was still on the stand. McDonald's french fries. Hot and greasy and salty. He remembered how the bag felt when they came right out of the deep fry, the paper the only thing between him and a first degree burn. He took another smell and tried had to remember it for later. Josie walked by and Troy acted like he was reading the ad. She knew and he knew but he couldn't bring himself to indulge right there in front of her.

His cruddy fingernail ran down the list. He wanted to save the best one for just before breakfast.

"Ladies' Home Journal, Nov. 2011, page 42." The picture was a dinner table set for a party, with a huge roast on a platter in front of an autumnal center piece of brown and orange. Troy's mouth watered just looking at it. He sniffed hard and loud like his cousin Lena used to snort coke. It all rushed in: Sunday dinner at his mother's house on Long Island, the steaming, juicy roast, and the margarine on the mashed potatoes. Even the peas smelled good and he didn't used to like peas but he hadn't tasted anything like his mother's cooking since he left home twenty-odd years ago. Troy's eyes were wet. He concentrated and snorted again.

He put the magazine back and grabbed his pack and headed for the door. Not too fast, otherwise they might think you took something.

On the library steps, over by the skinny bare trees, he sat and opened the his can of tuna. It was an old high-mercury albacore they couldn't sell in the grocery stores anymore, but you could still get them at the shelters.

He thought about the roast. Troy put himself back in the library just two minutes before and felt the magazine in his hands and he remembered. He really remembered until his mouth watered once more. He shut his eyes tight and scooped the tuna into his mouth and he brought back the smell and maybe even the taste of that roast just like his mother's Sunday dinners when he was a kid.

Christ, he thought, the cold wind a million miles away, What could be better than this?