Acids, Bases & Salts

 A sequel to Cards

“Today we will read the mysterious case of Dr. Acid and Mr. Base. As so and so newspapers and critics have termed it to be ‘The heartbroken kid’s guide to acids, bases and salts’, here it is for you to find out in a sickening and severely engrossing tale of again adjective bullshit-fancy-noun, adjective bullshit-fancy-noun, adjective bullshit-fancy-noun; oh fuck you!”

Cut.

You’re supposed to be polite.

Prepare for take 10.

Sean, you’re burning me out.

Make it quick, please.

Quick reminder – you are a teacher of chemistry.

Camera.

Cosmetic cream commercial – take 10.

Action.

“HERE YOU GO?”

Cut.

Who turned the caps lock on?

We are supposed to take this in the lower case.

Camera.

Voyeur – take 10.

Action.

“This is how you do it? You like that?

Yes. Sit. Stand. Pee. Sit. Fuck. Shit. Eat. Roll. Low. High. Fight. Sleep. Dope. Heal. Feel. Love. Do it. Not now. Now. Stay. Okay.”

Cut.

Not good.

Again.

Camera.

Cosmetic cream commercial – take 10.

Yes, take 10 again.

I had the last one deleted.

And you have one minute.

Go.

Sorry.

Action.

“So, the story of acids bases and salts in the language of litmus in a brief way. The previous sentence could have been briefer but who the fuck cares?

Acids

Litmus turns red.

Bases.

Litmus turns blue.

Salts.

Fuck you.”

Cut.

How long?

You have five seconds.

Camera.

Voyeur – take 10, again.

Action.

“No time for commas or hyphens or semicolons but time for full stops, grammar is a shite. Ph acid 0 7 base 7 14 salt love you.”

Cumming. Came. Cum.

That’d be 25 bucks for an hour.

‘The ride was good. When’s the carnival over?’

Never, Sir.

Our roller-coaster’s here to stay.

‘Okay! I am Sean. I’d like to have the job and the pleasure of riding it.”

Cards

 A sequel to Temples.

“A joint during the night,

Slaps the Devil, tight.

A joint during the day,

I make the cards you play.”

‘Dad, dad’, panted the little fisher-boy with an eye full of conundrums which were vexed into a distorted queue so that chipping their heads off could be sequential. The other eye was eaten by some fish when he was younger. ‘What?’, asked the dad with little amusement. ‘Have you heard of the lamb who rode the bicycle?, the boy slipped in quickly. ‘No, but I have heard of the cow who ate grass and the cat who ate fish’, the dad burst off like a chocolate bomb. ‘Really? Did the cow fly, was the cat high?’, sprinted the boy. ‘I am going to the joint,’ to eat cherry flavoured vices on double chocolate sins’, the dad took cover. ‘No Dad, you shan’t trade your soul, you mustn’t’, bloomed the boy like a speck of sunshine on a sunflower. ‘They are soles, not soles, my son. Off you go, to the Devil’shell’, the dad rode off on his bicycle. ‘The lamb who rode the bicycle’, the boy winked with his only eye. Only he knew the difference between ‘winked’ and ‘blinked’.

‘Why do they call you the Devil?’, the boy looked at the empty, mobile stand of snacks. The stand was mysterious – sky blue body with gray wheels and glassy eyes. Eyes that shone in the order of bright red and conveyed very bad grammar. ‘Because, you ate the egg?’, breathed the boy on the snail he had picked up from the open dry drain on his way. The red bodied snail flared his horns with diabolical pride.

The day is a bad bad time. ‘Dad, dad, is that you?’ the boy saw the joint walking into his dad through the rusty rib cage that served as a wicket. Wickets are better, they are less private than the doors. The doors only open to the bosses. The doors are big. The day never goes away; the day is like a disease the night has caught. It never goes away. It never does.

Cards. The fisher-boy was a fisher-boy by choice – his dad was an astronaut who sold bird-catchers to birds. The cards were laid on the roof of the monolith. The joint occupied a small place on the roof at the edge. They knew, the world was flat. ‘Do you dream, boy?’, hailed the stranger with a missing tooth, whom the boy talked to everyday. ‘No, sir, I fail the tests’, pissed the boy. ‘There isn’t any test’, burped the stranger. Play your card, birdie – the crocodile charmer nudged. Throwing the card in the air the father of the fisher boy shot at it and yelled ‘It’s birdie, motherfucker.’ ‘I have the pen where they held me till I could walk’, raced the boy, ‘I keep the fishes there’, he finished - he came first.’ ‘The fishes are beautiful – they have fins; but we humans, we are better, we have bins. Lots and lots of them; yet they don’t suffice’, the nose of the stranger dropped as if derelict of bones as the boy left with a rather fishy mien.

‘Is this your idea of a card game? - back home we had a board game, we had monopoly’, puked Sean. ‘What a waste of time. What did the yak say, again?’, cleaned up Sean.

“A joint during the night,

Slaps the Devil, tight.

A joint during the day,

I make the cards you play.”

Temples

A sequel to Voices.

A temple stood on bamboo feet in the middle of an abysmally and particularly Sicilian-mafia-fashion brutally murdered place – a place devoid of death and full of life

‘Ah Life’, snorted the yak in disgust.

‘Aren’t you alive’, asked the woman.

‘I am a statue, can’t you see’, the yak replied.

‘With piercings on your knees’, the woman added.

‘I am punk, you idiot’, shouted the yak.

‘Oh, I see’, wondered the woman.

The variegated stained glasses ornamenting the window-ey eyes of the mud-clad temple with bamboo stilettos provided the woman with invigorating images of the world that lay rotting outside. The woman and the yak stood face to face in a metaphysical encounter.

‘Souls are real’, asserted the woman.

‘Commercial yak-shit’, laughed the yak.

Yes, they worshipped the yak in that devil-forsaken place. The zombies had a perfectly lit world with a 7 inch long Bunsen burner. Their ideas were cradled over the blue flame of flowery filth and littered hopes for the deceased. They called their world Earth and portrayed it as a utopian condolence for screwing up big time. And yes, they worshipped the yak.

‘Then, why do people come to you’, the woman thought to herself.

‘Because they are irreparable fools’, whispered the yak to her.

‘You can read minds’, exclaimed the woman.

Don’t you know Bunsen burners do not emanate a lot of light, do you? They are non-luminous blue flames. Blue films and laboratories are lit with such flames. Then how could it qualify as the sun of the world the zombies lived in? The coloured glasses had a certain mystical quality to them; they showed exactly what the person in conversation with the yak wanted to see.

‘They say, you are pimp’, blurted out the woman.

‘Yes, I am into souls...’, hurried the yak.

‘You hypocritical piece of excrement’, intercepted the woman.

‘...the business of bodies hit a rock-bottom a million years ago’, continued the yak.

The blue-ey, gooey mess the zombies lived in was swept aside with an acidic broom of tantrum thrown sky high by the yak. The yak swore by his foibles and abhorred vicissitudes although his decision making abilities rested solely on the visceral(stooping over the bent down carnal) traits of audio-visual juxtapositions, in a flickering no light effect strewn once in a while with a hard mix of psychedelic lights upon haystacks that carried the stench of cattle saliva. The yak was the root of this world. He had sustained the world with his sheer magic, his wand being the Bunsen burner. The zombies worshipped the yak.

‘So, what brings you here’, the yak inquired.

‘I came here because...’, the woman stopped.

‘Do you see what I see’, the woman resumed.

‘No, it’s only meant for you’, the yak added quickly.

‘But, I want you to see...’, the woman gasped frantically.

‘...what I see. I want to share them with you’, the woman murmured slowly.

‘Okay! I will have your soul’, the yak declared.

‘You are free now’, the voice of the yak echoed through and beyond the mud walls.

The glasses were funny, you see – they showed visibly transmogrified dark skins into fair ones and expensive lenses that entitle you to call yourself richly gifted with convoluted perceptions of a swamp, over which moths hovered and the zombies called those harmless creatures butterflies. As the caterpillars grew old, they invited the humans to wake up from their deaths and live, to become zombies. Then the caterpillars deluded the humans and fancy-dressed into butterflies. The zombies had a floating joke about the humans – they named their moths butterflies.

‘The temples are beautiful’, the woman said, looking through the stained glasses.

‘They are all fakes’, the yak quipped.

‘What do you mean’, the woman asked in disbelief.

‘Don’t worry, you would forget that they are fakes when you walk out of that door’, the yak sympathised.

You can only reach the temple of the yak by an invitation.

The woman christened zombie walked in distorted strides out of the temple and as she did her tinkling anklets rusted and wrapped around her feet like hand painted tribal tattoos.

The bamboo shoots twinkled with the blue light. The glasses had turned gray. The bowl of Earth had been heated enough for the day. The mud walls became soft and clayey. It was time for the yak to rest. Yes, they worshipped the yak.

Sean removed his shoes, then his socks. He put on his shoes again sans the socks and wore the socks on his hands like gloves. He stepped into the temple of the yak.