the fall of the house of lab rat
[based on a chapter of "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov]
He woke up with sand in his mouth, and he woke up angry so he chewed the sand hard, and he chewed the sand until it was no longer sand but glass, and then chewed the glass until blood was spilling past his lips. The blood soothed the chancres on his gums as it gurgled past, over the stubble on his neck, and onto an old grey t-shirt. He sipped some water from a cup he'd left on a counter the night before, staining both, and left the house.
With no location in mind, he left. The only purpose in leaving was that he would come back. He didn’t put on a jacket, though he had several, wore no hat and no shoes. He would not return until the soles of his feet were coal, caked, leaving black footprints across every step he took. Said steps were predetermined, and not by him. He would not leave another footprint again.
His floor was recently mopped with chemicals he didn’t know the names of. One was in a maroon bottle shaped like a woman that smellt of maroon flowers and perfumed women. The other was in a yellow bottle and smelled like death the way death smells when it happens in hospitals or government buildings. Al Capone tried acid and lye to lift the signature from his fingerprints. It was Capone’s city, and with the old dago's blessing, he would use these yellow and maroon chemicals —purchased either from witch doctors or neighborhood carnicerias, he couldn’t remember which— and surely they would peel the footprints from his feet, and he could travel the continents without leaving a mark, without being found.
He walked aimlessly over alley and pavement, over dirt and litter and the season’s first grasses. He felt eyes on him, though he saw no faces and, in fact, saw no people. At some point, in some liquor store that anchored the corner of some intersection (and what was he doing there?) he heard a little girl crying, knew it was because of him. Fully aware that he looked like hell but it wasn‘t that. It wasn’t the patchy stubble and sleepingdress that made him look like a madman; it wasn't the blood, which stretched from behind his teeth halfway down his chest; and it wasn’t the rocks of crust that formed all over in sleep, as if every opening in his body was preemptively trying to seal itself in. It was his eyes.
He had liked his eyes always. When he was a little boy, decrepit old women marveled at them. ‘What long lashes!’ they said. ‘How deep! How thoughtful!’ cooing and blessing his mother. ‘An artist!’ they said. ‘A teacher!’ ‘A doctor!’ Now nuggets of green and yellow ore held the lashes shut like some clever and waiting flytrap. ‘Nothing today, wasp sir, I am full.’ They held no morsels though, nothing anyone would want; man, beast or holder himself. They held something like death but… not quite. They were like the eyes of old blind Greeks, who sayed sooth and predicted misfortune always and everyone smart just wanted to get away.
He walked for hours or maybe just minutes, or possibly just rubbed his feet in the dirt for a few and turned around. He walked until he saw yellow bricks, and then red bricks and rod iron, and then the painted brand sprayed before his door, though it wasn’t his house. He climbed a heating pipe, onto the balcony, which needed mopping. And smashed a candle over the edge, glass rained down on the street. This signaled the beginning. He took the propane tank from his grill and dabbed a rag into it, a long one, held the far end over a candle, a lantern with the glass broken and waited. It was a stubborn lantern but took after two matches. With his bare foot he kicked through the glass, which immediately broke. He felt no pain though shards lodged themselves into the old carvings in his legs, as if by fate or magnetism. He felt no pain until his unclipped toes reached the screen door. The little wires unclasped each other and took his leg pulling him further and further until he lost his balance. They wrapped around his leg up to his thigh, tied and hugged the shards of glass and he jerked his entire mass through two doors. Little pains of wood and glass and screen. He hoped the result would be cartoon, that the hole would replicate the contours of his body in some dynamic pose but he did not turn around to look. He felt wet and cool, from sweat or blood.
He ran to his right and tossed the cages across the room at the sink. The tired lids burped up his only dependents, a 9-legged gimp spider, a greedy toad aand a million pinhead crickets. The spider climbed a wall and the frog bedded in the week-old grime on a dish. The crickets sang their freedom and sprung in every direction, mostly into vents where they would rot and render the entire house unlivable. He left his toys alone, his little collectibles that amassed a lifetime alone. He would become a rampaging Buddhist, making his life with them unlivable.
He picked up the turntable which was not his and lifted it high above it’s head, two old speakers dangled from it like pitiful testicles and trailed it like a comet as it followed the plastic cages to the wall above the sink where it smashed and fell, breaking the faucet so that water geysered up. He flipped through the records on the floor the way he flips through books he’s not reading and walked on. Under the sink, where water was already collecting, he grabbed her drill and it’s finest bits, puncturing the old olive fridge. If there was food it would spoil, but there was only a single chicken breast that had been grilled the night before. When he looked through the hole in the unopened fridge and thought about the grill, as if on cue, the tank of propane exploded, sending tiles flying up and killing the grill itself which lay like a rape-victim on the sidewalk.
Pulling pieces of brick from the back of his head and the tattoo on his neck, he squeezed the trigger on the drill and it squealed. He ran downstairs, poking everything: Twinkling little Christmas lights and video games, VCRs and DVD players, stereos and projectors, microwaves and computer monitor after computer monitor after computer monitior (in every room but the bathroom it seemed), a theremin, a casio, the skin of a drum and the strings of a balalaika that had never been tuned; a didgeridoo now looked like a flute, he ripped the stringboard of a piano and each bit of steel sang like an angel its one note song on its way to heaven.
He spun, panting, around…still hearing the sounds of explosions or perhaps the ringing in his ears. Maybe a war had erupted. Maybe he’d started one. He ran, asthmatic, passed former heroes emblazoned on walls, Salvador Dali and Frank Zappa, and Hunter Thompson, dead all and into his own bedroom. He pulled out another stick match. It broke in half as he lit it and he held it in his fingers until it burnt itself out on the old scar on his torn fingerprint. He took a second to contemplate, dropped the drill for the first time. He stood over his bed, or maybe it wasn’t his. His was in another room of the house, he’d traded it with someone and picked up a discard, but maybe that wasn’t his but an old girlfriends’. They were all inhabited by cruel and twisted demons that inhabited him too. He lit and threw a match. He’d been sleeping with the same kind of blankets he’d had when he was a kid. He lit and threw a match. The comforter caught. He lit and threw a match. An old stack of pictures he’d taken for school took up. He lit and threw a match. The desk his mother fished out of an alley for him. He lit and threw a match. A floor full of thriftstore shirts and pants he’d found after parties. He lit and threw a match. Sweat and blood drained over his eyes. Salt everywhere. He lit and threw a match, and ran out into the hall, coughing.
He heard a noise that wasn’t his. He heard a noise that was neither the fire crackling as it consumed everything nor water rushing and soaking everything else. It was not the sizzle from where the two met and grappled. It was a plaintive yell, a whimper like only a kitten could make. Fire all around he braved his roommate’s room, flushed with guilt and saw two black cats nuzzling the iris of a ring of fire. He scooped one up, then the other and walked back, not out through the front door but back to the balcony. A board loosened and nearly sending him to Hell, which now looked an awful lot like his basement. Ge regained his footing and walked out, setting the cats down.
“Your mother will be here soon,” he told them, referring to his roommate. “Go into the alley and play, catch mice and eat well. Fight opossums and raccoons but stay close, she will be here soon.”
He slowly, more methodically walked back through a broken screen that did not leave a perfect cartoon silhouette of himself and stepped over to the area that separated his living room and kitchen, where fire and water were still wrestling to no avail and with one foot in each he picked up a record. It was one of his favorites but no one else knew it. It was one of his favorites because it was one of his favorites when he drove around in other peoples cars when he was seventeen and alone. He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, wher He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, where he grabbed the frog off a floating wooden bowl and the tarantula from a dirty pink tile on the wall. He placed them on each shoulder, where you would see somebody’s moral compass and id in the movies. The faucet spewed cold, crystal water onto his arm,and he wiped the blood off his face. He walked back to the fire and picked up his boots, which had smoldered a little, stinking to high hell without being destroyed and laced them. He let the record hang over the fire until the vinyl was hot and limp and wrapped his arm and he walked out through the front door. He left the frog and spider in place. They would go with him as long as they wanted. The tarantula would probably lose his footing, and with it, another foot. The frog would probably die no matter what. He removed the still-pliable record from his arm, placing it over a nail on the outside of his front door. They will understand this, he thought, and walked off, never leaving a footprint again.
He woke up with sand in his mouth, and he woke up angry so he chewed the sand hard, and he chewed the sand until it was no longer sand but glass, and then chewed the glass until blood was spilling past his lips. The blood soothed the chancres on his gums as it gurgled past, over the stubble on his neck, and onto an old grey t-shirt. He sipped some water from a cup he'd left on a counter the night before, staining both, and left the house.
With no location in mind, he left. The only purpose in leaving was that he would come back. He didn’t put on a jacket, though he had several, wore no hat and no shoes. He would not return until the soles of his feet were coal, caked, leaving black footprints across every step he took. Said steps were predetermined, and not by him. He would not leave another footprint again.
His floor was recently mopped with chemicals he didn’t know the names of. One was in a maroon bottle shaped like a woman that smellt of maroon flowers and perfumed women. The other was in a yellow bottle and smelled like death the way death smells when it happens in hospitals or government buildings. Al Capone tried acid and lye to lift the signature from his fingerprints. It was Capone’s city, and with the old dago's blessing, he would use these yellow and maroon chemicals —purchased either from witch doctors or neighborhood carnicerias, he couldn’t remember which— and surely they would peel the footprints from his feet, and he could travel the continents without leaving a mark, without being found.
He walked aimlessly over alley and pavement, over dirt and litter and the season’s first grasses. He felt eyes on him, though he saw no faces and, in fact, saw no people. At some point, in some liquor store that anchored the corner of some intersection (and what was he doing there?) he heard a little girl crying, knew it was because of him. Fully aware that he looked like hell but it wasn‘t that. It wasn’t the patchy stubble and sleepingdress that made him look like a madman; it wasn't the blood, which stretched from behind his teeth halfway down his chest; and it wasn’t the rocks of crust that formed all over in sleep, as if every opening in his body was preemptively trying to seal itself in. It was his eyes.
He had liked his eyes always. When he was a little boy, decrepit old women marveled at them. ‘What long lashes!’ they said. ‘How deep! How thoughtful!’ cooing and blessing his mother. ‘An artist!’ they said. ‘A teacher!’ ‘A doctor!’ Now nuggets of green and yellow ore held the lashes shut like some clever and waiting flytrap. ‘Nothing today, wasp sir, I am full.’ They held no morsels though, nothing anyone would want; man, beast or holder himself. They held something like death but… not quite. They were like the eyes of old blind Greeks, who sayed sooth and predicted misfortune always and everyone smart just wanted to get away.
He walked for hours or maybe just minutes, or possibly just rubbed his feet in the dirt for a few and turned around. He walked until he saw yellow bricks, and then red bricks and rod iron, and then the painted brand sprayed before his door, though it wasn’t his house. He climbed a heating pipe, onto the balcony, which needed mopping. And smashed a candle over the edge, glass rained down on the street. This signaled the beginning. He took the propane tank from his grill and dabbed a rag into it, a long one, held the far end over a candle, a lantern with the glass broken and waited. It was a stubborn lantern but took after two matches. With his bare foot he kicked through the glass, which immediately broke. He felt no pain though shards lodged themselves into the old carvings in his legs, as if by fate or magnetism. He felt no pain until his unclipped toes reached the screen door. The little wires unclasped each other and took his leg pulling him further and further until he lost his balance. They wrapped around his leg up to his thigh, tied and hugged the shards of glass and he jerked his entire mass through two doors. Little pains of wood and glass and screen. He hoped the result would be cartoon, that the hole would replicate the contours of his body in some dynamic pose but he did not turn around to look. He felt wet and cool, from sweat or blood.
He ran to his right and tossed the cages across the room at the sink. The tired lids burped up his only dependents, a 9-legged gimp spider, a greedy toad aand a million pinhead crickets. The spider climbed a wall and the frog bedded in the week-old grime on a dish. The crickets sang their freedom and sprung in every direction, mostly into vents where they would rot and render the entire house unlivable. He left his toys alone, his little collectibles that amassed a lifetime alone. He would become a rampaging Buddhist, making his life with them unlivable.
He picked up the turntable which was not his and lifted it high above it’s head, two old speakers dangled from it like pitiful testicles and trailed it like a comet as it followed the plastic cages to the wall above the sink where it smashed and fell, breaking the faucet so that water geysered up. He flipped through the records on the floor the way he flips through books he’s not reading and walked on. Under the sink, where water was already collecting, he grabbed her drill and it’s finest bits, puncturing the old olive fridge. If there was food it would spoil, but there was only a single chicken breast that had been grilled the night before. When he looked through the hole in the unopened fridge and thought about the grill, as if on cue, the tank of propane exploded, sending tiles flying up and killing the grill itself which lay like a rape-victim on the sidewalk.
Pulling pieces of brick from the back of his head and the tattoo on his neck, he squeezed the trigger on the drill and it squealed. He ran downstairs, poking everything: Twinkling little Christmas lights and video games, VCRs and DVD players, stereos and projectors, microwaves and computer monitor after computer monitor after computer monitior (in every room but the bathroom it seemed), a theremin, a casio, the skin of a drum and the strings of a balalaika that had never been tuned; a didgeridoo now looked like a flute, he ripped the stringboard of a piano and each bit of steel sang like an angel its one note song on its way to heaven.
He spun, panting, around…still hearing the sounds of explosions or perhaps the ringing in his ears. Maybe a war had erupted. Maybe he’d started one. He ran, asthmatic, passed former heroes emblazoned on walls, Salvador Dali and Frank Zappa, and Hunter Thompson, dead all and into his own bedroom. He pulled out another stick match. It broke in half as he lit it and he held it in his fingers until it burnt itself out on the old scar on his torn fingerprint. He took a second to contemplate, dropped the drill for the first time. He stood over his bed, or maybe it wasn’t his. His was in another room of the house, he’d traded it with someone and picked up a discard, but maybe that wasn’t his but an old girlfriends’. They were all inhabited by cruel and twisted demons that inhabited him too. He lit and threw a match. He’d been sleeping with the same kind of blankets he’d had when he was a kid. He lit and threw a match. The comforter caught. He lit and threw a match. An old stack of pictures he’d taken for school took up. He lit and threw a match. The desk his mother fished out of an alley for him. He lit and threw a match. A floor full of thriftstore shirts and pants he’d found after parties. He lit and threw a match. Sweat and blood drained over his eyes. Salt everywhere. He lit and threw a match, and ran out into the hall, coughing.
He heard a noise that wasn’t his. He heard a noise that was neither the fire crackling as it consumed everything nor water rushing and soaking everything else. It was not the sizzle from where the two met and grappled. It was a plaintive yell, a whimper like only a kitten could make. Fire all around he braved his roommate’s room, flushed with guilt and saw two black cats nuzzling the iris of a ring of fire. He scooped one up, then the other and walked back, not out through the front door but back to the balcony. A board loosened and nearly sending him to Hell, which now looked an awful lot like his basement. Ge regained his footing and walked out, setting the cats down.
“Your mother will be here soon,” he told them, referring to his roommate. “Go into the alley and play, catch mice and eat well. Fight opossums and raccoons but stay close, she will be here soon.”
He slowly, more methodically walked back through a broken screen that did not leave a perfect cartoon silhouette of himself and stepped over to the area that separated his living room and kitchen, where fire and water were still wrestling to no avail and with one foot in each he picked up a record. It was one of his favorites but no one else knew it. It was one of his favorites because it was one of his favorites when he drove around in other peoples cars when he was seventeen and alone. He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, wher He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, where he grabbed the frog off a floating wooden bowl and the tarantula from a dirty pink tile on the wall. He placed them on each shoulder, where you would see somebody’s moral compass and id in the movies. The faucet spewed cold, crystal water onto his arm,and he wiped the blood off his face. He walked back to the fire and picked up his boots, which had smoldered a little, stinking to high hell without being destroyed and laced them. He let the record hang over the fire until the vinyl was hot and limp and wrapped his arm and he walked out through the front door. He left the frog and spider in place. They would go with him as long as they wanted. The tarantula would probably lose his footing, and with it, another foot. The frog would probably die no matter what. He removed the still-pliable record from his arm, placing it over a nail on the outside of his front door. They will understand this, he thought, and walked off, never leaving a footprint again.
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