Archive for the ‘Sara Genge’ Category
To Each His Own Hell
Friday, September 21st, 2007
Merridot sipped his absinthe and wondered if this was Hell. It certainly had that flavour to it, high on depravity, low on pleasure, high on desire, low on release… But it lacked a certain evilness about it and the eternal torment… well, sitting at a bar drinking couldn’t be called eternal damnation, now could it? The other option, that this was Heaven, was too silly to contemplate. Surely, Heaven wasn’t this seedy.
He had almost made it as a painter. Merridot was sure that if he had only lived long enough, he could have been more famous than Monet.
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“Drivel away, drivel away,” the little devil muttered as he tried to force Merridot and his stinking art further down the Cosmic Drain. The little devil didn’t like his job. It embarrassed him that when relatives came to visit, they would always find him next to the sewer. A friend from college had once asked him why he didn’t quit and beg his way into Heaven, but evil was so much more seductive. The little devil would take an entry job in Evil over a senior position in Good, any day of the month. Good boys went to Heaven. Bad boys went everywhere (or at least down the drain).
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“Say, if this is Hell, it ain’t quite so bad,” said the cabaret girl.
Merridot stared at her thighs and agreed with her. If this was hell, it wasn’t quite so bad at all. Only problem was that the Sewer Drift (the expansion of the universe that occurs in a diabolic sewer) kept pushing them apart. Merridot opined that if he could only grab the girl’s legs, he’d be in Heaven.
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“No respect for Hell,” thought the little devil as he pushed Merridot further away from the girl. “What could you expect? Bad artists…” and here the devil shoved with a lot more might than he was paid for. “I’ll teach you, you little creep.”
Merridot watched the girl drift away. Of course, if he was going to be an artist, he couldn’t letwomen distract him. It was all for the better, he thought. He took another drink and kept scribbling.
From the void where Lucifer falls for all eternity, came a voice: “Idiot, people make their own hell!”
Merridot continued drawing. He was sure he’d imagined it.
Save Me!
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Before Ted was born, a fortune-teller told his mother, he’d be the luckiest of men.
Ted must have heard her because, ever since then, he displayed an absolute faith in humanity. When the doctor failed to determine Ted’s relative position to his mother’s pelvis by palpation, he ordered an x-ray (it was the 90s) which showed him sprawled like a parachuter, face down, head firmly lodged against his mother’s liver, back arched impossibly and feel pushing at his mother’s lower left ribs.
He probably expected his mother to give birth to him in this position and even love him after the ordeal.
Other babies are pretty good at making a fuss when they’re sick, but not Ted. He had total confidence in his mother’s ability to tell hunger from pneumonia and indeed, she got pretty good at it after years of running after her child with a thermometer, catching him in her arms when he jumped out of a tree, hiding his bike after he’d crashed twice and, in general, rescuing him so effectively that Ted reached adulthood without breaking a single bone or ending up in the hospital even once.
He was born lucky, he knew, but that didn’t save him from depression.
It was three in the morning. The barbiturates hadn’t been easy to get, but he knew someone who knew someone. Even in that he was lucky.
Ted downed the pills with a shot of whiskey and cradled the bottle in his arm, hoping he wouldn’t pass out until he had enjoyed a few more swigs. The phone rang and the answering machine went off.
“Ted, darling, what a stupid thing to do,” came his mother’s harried voice. “I’m sending the ambulance over, I’ve told them about the key you keep under the mat, so why don’t you do everyone a favor and go to the bathroom to puke? It’ll save them a lot of trouble.”
“Why do I feel so bad? I’m supposed to be so lucky.”
“I think it’s obvious you are lucky. Anyone else would have been dead by now. You are a lucky man, Ted, and I seem to be your good luck charm.”