Journal Entry One
(Or: Well, Shit. I Guess We're Doing This.)
So.
Hi.
How are you?
You holdin' up okay?
Me too.
I made this thread back when I first joined BMR mostly as a means to get a few giggles and attract a little attention; I'm a sucker for attention, I'm not ashamed to admit. Eventually, it fell into disuse as I settled into my
βniche and I didn't think anything else of it other than occasionally taking a gander at that (hilariously awful, tyvm) header post. Now, in a fit of what can only be described as hubris, I've made the tough decision to... actually use it. May God have mercy (or at least a sense of humor). So, let's get down to brass tacks. Let's explore this sudden whim. Let
me relate to
you so that
you might relate to
me.
I've never really kept a journal before. No diary, blog, or memoir either. This is all uncharted territory, a vacant wilderness, and as such, I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. The closest approximation I have is a little notebook I keep where I write down ideas that cross my mind, but for the most part, I just let things rattle around in my head until they come falling out my mouth (or ears or nose or the tips of my fingers). Ultimately, I guess this is going to end up being a space where I prattle on like I'm doing right now, share candid little glimpses of my (relatively boring) life, drop the occasional creative pursuit, the occasional poem or prose or art, make recommendations that others might like, leave vague hints at my emotional well being, and explore all those messy inner workings that no one is really interested in knowing.
You don't gotta read it, you know.
So, for our maiden voyage and in an attempt to show I can captain this ship, here's an olive branch in the form of an unfinished short story I started writing that I can't imagine I'll use elsewhere. If was a thinly veiled attempt to transform myself into Philip K. Dick. Turns out, I'm not very good at being him. Read it, enjoy it, comment on it, or don't. Either way, I've done my part.
Deadfink Gironomo stood up, pulled out his gun, and shot Carlisle Carlos in the back of the head.
It didn't hurt, he imagined. It must have felt like a bee sting or a bug bite. The bullet hollowed out its hole through Carlisle's brain, severing soul from body in a spray of ichor and violence across asphalt. For a moment, Deadfink's heart was all atwitter from the sin he'd just committed, but then he remembered the briefcase handcuffed to his left wrist and all that god lovin' money within. Oh, to hold the lion's share.
Carlisle lay dead facedown in a rain puddle, arms outstretched from east and west. Deadfink sighed, but he didn't cry. Nostalgia was the past's way of getting even, a breadcrumb trail made from teensy-weensy reminders of where or what they'd been, moments lost in time and left covered in cobwebs. They'd met amongst the fish hatcheries and poppy fields, out there beyond the buildings and the lights and the city and its people. There in the alabaster glow of the provincial midnight, their eyes met from across a potter's field while the crowd gyrated against the weight of the days to come. They danced together to a tarantella made for two and shared their first kiss behind a barn built from splinterwood by hands far more calloused than their own. For a long time, they were happy like that, but happiness is as fickle as a candle's flame and the slightest breeze can snuff it out of existence. Soon enough, reality found them and nipped at their heels, chasing them out of their dream and back to their arbitrary lives.
Deadfink laid quarters on his dead lover's eyes, muttering a few words beneath his breath. "Abyssinia, mon amour." He waltzed away from Carlisle's body, out of the alley, back to the streets, and into that neon warmth of Clever Road. The cars overhead whizzed and zipped between the skyscrapers while the street corner holograms advertised their wares with barking promises of this, that, and the other. Deadfink ignored all that noise, whistling an old John Prine song while he tapped the address of the meeting place into his neural navigator. His vision lit up with bells and whistles, a waypoint set in the distance and an augmented arrow pointing him southward. In just a few short miles, Deadfink Geronimo would be the eighteen-thousandth richest man in the whole of Fell City. Joy, mon amour. Joy and jubilee.
The city was redolent with smoke and charred churrasco, belching exhaust pipes and overcooked bammy bread; you don't really love a city for its sights and sounds, but for the smells it might supply. Deadfink has learned that the hard way, after his eyes were given an acid bath, but before they were replaced by the miracle of silence. Even then, years removed, he still unplugged his visual processor from time to time and followed his nose. There was comfort in that; the knowledge that the world could be whatever he imagined as long as he turned off his eyes.
Carlisle had been the one to make the deal. It was real simple, but came with a big payout: meet a pair of Venetian smugglers at Docking Bay 52. They'd come aboard a refueling ship bound for South Australia and you'd know them by their clothing, bedazzled in rhinestones and beadery. Venetians never knew how to stay under the radar. Prideful, Deadfink imagined. Full of smoke and mirrors, covered in greasepaint and pastels to hide their paperthin souls. Either way, they held the briefcase and all it took was a few words spoken in code to make the exchange.
"This is a lot of money," the taller Venetian had said. "It had better be worth our time."
"We're just the middlemen," Carlisle explained. "You'll get your tech, but it has nothing to do with us."
"Lowest on the totem pole," Deadfink said. "We might as well be buried beneath the ground."
That wasn't, in fact, the truth. There would be no tech. The actual middlemen, the ones that the Venetians were supposed to meet, had taken a long trip off a tall building. Splat! These things happen. Death comes for us all. It's only a matter of time and bad luck.
They shook hands before departing. That made it real. They'd stopped in an alley on the way to the rathskeller where they'd trade the briefcase for a suitable cut. That was how Carlisle ended up with a bullet in his brain and coins on his eyes. These things happen. Death comes for us all. It's only a matter of time and bad luck. Deadfink Geronimo only felt the slightest twinge of guilt. Greed is greed, though. No one is invulnerable to Mammon's seduction. Deadfink was already counting his coins and imagining what life would be like up there in the clouds, the streets below just a bad dream.
It would be smooth sailing from there on out.
Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)
