-- 21 --
With
a sudden and crushing certainty, the hero of this story became aware
that all of the women he would ever fall in love with were destined
to remain forever out of his reach. He spent a long time trying to
be interested in uninteresting women who were interested in him, but
it always ended in tears.
One
day, his mother said to him, "I'm getting pretty sick of this shit,
waiting around for you to make me a goddamn grandkid." So, the hero
of this story committed all of his time on the weekends of the following
year constructing a boy out of used coffee cups and diet soda bottles
he'd scavenged from the garbage cans of the New York City subway system.
"Bottle
Boy"-- as he came to be known-- was a charming, handsome fellow, except
during the syrupy-hot days of the loathsome heart of summer. He was
well liked and popular, though he struggled with algebra and failed
to make the cut for the track team. The hero was quite proud of Bottle
Boy, nonetheless.
Friends
and acquaintances of the hero frequently offered him tremendous gifts
in exchange for their own Bottle Boys, but for unknown reasons, the
hero was never able to successfully recreate his spectacular experiment.
International corporations approached him with licensing contracts
and visions of global franchises, but they always crawled back disappointedly
as shamed dogs in expensive suits to their glass dens and palaces
of fear.
The
times grew thin and dark. The bills grew fangs as the money withered.
The hero, bent and lined as a map, was forced to recycle bits of Bottle
Boy for meals of cold, unleavened bread and tepid lemonade.
At
last, lying upon the coarse mattress of his debtor's prison cot before
the looming gates of shadowed death, the hero and Bottle Boy-- now
a mere toothy ring from a twist-off plastic cap-- had the following
conversation:
"Bottle
Boy?"
"Yes?"
"Soon
I shall pass from this world. I am called home."
"Yes.
I have long toiled with the fear that this hated day would come. Would
that only the meat of you were this firm, good plastic, a malleable,
stubborn thing in this river, this black and bitter gnawing we call
time."
"Bottle
Boy?"
"Yes?"
"Do
not forget me, Bottle Boy."
"Never,"
said Bottle Boy. "Though the ages shall weaken me, turn my gloss to
brittleness and toss this tender mortal coil which thou hast given
me to the great, serrated edges of the world, you, my kind-hearted
and noble sir, shall forever burn tall and warm within this untouchable
cell, this soft and gentle island of memory."
And
with these words, the hero's spirit rose and excused itself from the
dining table of the living.
-------------------------
<<
STORY 20 | CLOSE
WINDOW | STORY
22 >>