PART FOUR POINT FIVE

PART ONE

DAWN; ON THE TRAIN, WAITING TO SEE FRANCIE

PROTAGONIST: PROTAGONIST

The story begins on a train, which the protagonist is traveling on to the town of Büshka. Their friend Francie has been living there for the past three years after graduating college; they are both 25. They make a point of visiting Francie at least once a month, but last month Francie was sick so this time she wants today to be grandest day out. “Why doesn’t the protagonist just stay for two days then?” Someone asks. Well, Francie may have been sick, but she, being her overly proud self, continued to make plans with the protagonist anyway, thinking that she could pull through for the day. Sure enough, when the protagonist came to visit that month, Francie slept through the entire day with a 1o3°fever!

So, here is the protagonist on the train. Billions of neurons are firing all throughout their head. As a child, they “suffered” from a learning disability which disabled their ability to think for themselves and make decisions rationally, actually just making decisions at all was obsolete to them at all times. Unless a truck was blaring it’s horn at them in the middle of the road, it was only then would they make a decision and then they would carry on with their robotic-lifestyle, (if they even had a life style at all). They had to constantly be reminded of going-ons and such, and that job fell into the hands of Francie. If you looked at their school photos from 1^st grade to 8^th grade, you could see their insecurity grow with each year. Francie always tried to break through the thick layers of overgrown brush. Thankfully, now they can take care of the brush problem by themselves mostly.

The protagonist sits there, fidgeting with their brown paper lunch bag and looking back and forth to the window, almost as if they expect one of the times Jesus will appear and rapture his children to heaven; they’ll bang on the glass shouting, “Hey, wait, you forgot me! Come back Jesus!” They decide to pull the window down due to this life threatening caution and they feel the dew in the cool air on their face and smile with their eyes closed. For some reason the thought of a cucumber comes to mind. They chuckle to themselves as they remember the comic character that they and Francie both looked up to as kids: Wallace the sea cumber.

Excited as they are, they can’t help but feel a little nervous. They turn around to look at the tan leather seat they’re sitting on and all its little creases, running their hands along as many lines as they could. Eventually the contact between their fingertips and the seat feels abnormally smooth, almost as if their fingertips have adapted to the creases and molded themselves to fit each one. They do this for an unknown amount of time until the conductor shouts into the carriage that the train has arrived in Büshka.

(End of part one “Dawn; on the train, waiting to see FrancIe”)

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

PART TWO

SUNRISE; WOULD YOU LIKE TO GRAB SOME BAGELS? I KNOW A GREAT PLACE!

The protagonist stands up, brushes off their pants, and waits in line to get off the train with what seems to be the entire carriage. They look back to confirm this and just as they had thought, there wasn’t anyone left in the carriage. They look forward now, past the person who is in front of them and they see FrancIe waving to them on the platform. They wave back, causing distress and confusion for the person in front of the protagonist, as they have no idea what is happening. Once there is no one in front of the protagonist, Francie runs up to them and immediately asks, “Would you like to grab some bagels? I know a great place!” She might as well had punched them in the stomach and asked, “How are you?” As they had not expected this to be the first thing they would hear from her. All confidence now crumbled into dust, they mumble an answer and Francie takes their hand and runs to the bagel place. To the protagonist, it feels as if she had picked them up and was dashing through every obstacle in her way, like a ghost floating through walls. And as soon she had grabbed their hand, they were there; like magic. The protagonist simply floats through the line, orders whatever and sits down with Francie, who was acting extra bubbly that morning; enjoying her pizza bagel as if she was just given 1,000,000 dollars to be herself. “Hey, what’s up with you? Francie asks with a frown, interrupting whatever trance the protagonist was just in. They say they were “just feeling weird”.

(End of part two “Would you like to grab some bagels? I know a great place!”)

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

PART THREE

AFTERNOON; THE SUN SHINES THROUGH THE BARS OF THE BRIDGE AND I’M HAPPY IN YOUR HANDS

The sun has now reached its peak for the day and the heat is an unmitigated crisis for the protagonist and Francie. After eating lunch and grabbing some donuts at the nearby store, they run to a bridge where they can at least hide from some of the sun’s rays. The streaks of sunlight that make their way onto the bridge’s walkway decorate the bridge with pretty stripes. Eating their donuts, the protagonist and Francie enjoy the decorations the sun has provided for them. They hear a plane fly over the bridge and its shadow covers the entire bridge for a moment. The plane’s loud engine is the only thing that can be heard for this moment. Everyone around stops what they are doing to listen to the planes loud captive (not they have a choice really). To break the “silent tension”, Francie punches the protagonist in the shoulder and laughs, causing the protagonist to laugh as well just because it was such a lame attempt to start a conversation; it worked though

(End of part 3 “Afternoon; the sun shines through the bars of the bridge and I’m happy in your hands”)

PART FOUR

DUSK; FALLING ASLEEP, KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOVED

The protagonist and Francie walk back to Francie’s apartment where dimly lit Christmas lights are the only things guiding the way. They go into Francie’s room, not saying a word to each other. Francie puts on a record and sirs down on a pillow by her window while the protagonist sits on her bed. They take a moment to look at each other and think about their friendship. They look back on their dysfunctional sadistic behaviors when school was a living hell for them. Francie looks back on the time when she made the protagonist cry. “I was trying to get them to do something stupid for me, I was such an idiot. They hadn’t done anything bad to me ever and I treated them like shit.” Francie now starts crying and the protagonist just sits there and watches. The protagonist gets up after a minute of this and walks over to sit down next to her. They lean over and whisper in her ear, “It’s okay; I’ve fucked up too. We all have.” Although it wasn’t exactly what someone in that state would want to hear, she knew they were trying to make it better and just knowing that cheered her up. She gets up, wipes her tears away, and laughs as loud as she could to “scare off any spirits that were trying to get her down”. She looks down on the protagonist and smiles at them. ALL IS WELL

(End of part four “dusk; falling asleep, know that you are loved”)

PART FIVE

MIDNIGHT; GOODYE FRANCIE, I’M GOING TO MISS YOU!

“Sleep washes over every one of us, but I hope we share a dream tonight”

PART FOUR POINT FIVE

???; NIGHT LIFE IN THE LEMON TOWN OF BüSHKA

The scene changes. The picture fuzzes out. A man slips into a void. You fall through his vision, onto the pavement. The lamplight’s glow is shrouded by darkness.

YOU WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING..

PART SIX! !DANCE DANCE!

Büshka’s netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of every bruise on your body; the soft ringing that can be heard all throughout the town but can only be seen in shades of green

????? slips into your mind
One hand in your head, one in your eyes
The smell of sulfur still reeks from the last visit to ??????
The lights move across your wall
into unorganized piles of fall
colors which can only be seen
in the shades of fluorescent streams
Like the ones in your backyard
where 5 years ago it was barred
from reality; underground,
the places where mouths make no sounds
where hands make no notion
of what is in motion
You get off at the last stop,
slip into a bag,
slip into a coma,
into the cracks of the mirror.
where you don’t know Luka
and you don’t know anyone else
Slip into the netherworld of Büshka

PART SEVEN AND EIGHT! !DANCE DANCE!

SPITTING FLAMES AT THE BUS STOP; THE WOMAN WHO SPITS FLAMES AT THE BUS STOP

As you look up, foreign smells and shop signs fill your vision and the Turkish man who has the fundamental power to destroy everything that this world has given birth to is standing on the dock waiting for your arrival elsewhere; there is only the dim fluorescent glow from the Büshkan sea creatures, you’ll see perfectly fine, but speech is only superficial; the woman at the bus stop spits flames, doesn’t that humor you?

END

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 388