| Visit our Bookstore |
|
|
|
|
Disturbed Happiness
By Kevin Hazelwood
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques
Do the dishes like and enjoy their experience in the dishwasher? Is it fun to be sprayed with hot water and scrubbed with soap? It must be like a Jacuzzi. Or is it hell? Do they dread it like they dread being dropped or a utensil dreads being at the bottom of the sink for fear of the garbage disposal sucking it into the abyss of old food and sharp blades with a great hunger for metal? Do the clothes like the washing machine? Do they anticipate being worn so they can go on the spinning ride? And then in the twirling sauna? On the other hand, maybe they get dizzy or over-heated so they shudder in the bottom of a drawer or in the corner of a closet. They panic about the day when a giant stain is gushed onto them so they have to have stain remover poured on like acid. And to think that people do all of these things everyday without even a thought.
She opened her eyes and saw her room. She saw her over-sized desk by the window, through which sunlight was pouring. She glanced at the pictures of smiling people hanging on the wall. In her mind, she named each of them: Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Philip, Aunt Michelle, Cousin “Fro”, Rob, and Phil Jr. The cat called Zuma pranced confidently into the room smelling of freshly trimmed grass. The world of dust was visible by the window. How it danced. She watched as her toes wiggled in an early morning awakening at the end of the bed. Zuma leaped up onto her legs and sniffed the familiar scents: tobacco, paint, a little cheap wine. He twirled a few times before cuddling between her ankles. The room looked like a painting and if painted from a different perspective, she would have been the star, or maybe Zuma would have been, or maybe her glass elephant was the focus. She was distracted from her thoughts by the remembrance of the mandatory social dinner. Because she was given paper-based power, she was forced to listen to beings who prided themselves by giving fake people things that they do not even have. She hated living in a world where everything is based on pieces of paper, without which the society could not function. They valued such insignificant things, they hand them the power. Its all part of their Universal Structuring plan. She closed her eyes, shutting out the blind inhabitants of the world that sadly houses them.
The lights were burning brightly when she awoke. The fish was floating at the surface of his home in a bowl of glass. His life of swimming back and forth had ended. He was destined to be flushed. She tried to remember when she had fallen into the trance of sleep. It was either days or minutes, neither mattered. Two strings were splayed lifeless next to her on the sheet. The strings crossed unevenly. It bothered her that she could not visualize them evenly crossed. It was just too distracting. She shouldn’t fixate on such minute things. She needed to escape. She got out a cigarette and smelled it. She lit it and watched it burned thinking about being a tobacco speck, a fire roaring through your home. She inhaled the billowing killer, feeling it eat at her throat and fill her lungs with gray bliss. She exhaled. The blankness was everywhere she looked. The smoked crawled up to the ceiling to join many other clouds of toxins that formed a yellow residue on the paint. She whispered to herself, “Sometimes the wind blows without knowing where it is going.”
The ephemeral tea of jasmine green dripped down her throat, trickling slowly, leaving its tranquility as it passed. The illumination went in reverse. The dots were playing in the bleak shadows. The water wrapped around her waist like a skirt while a roaring cloud of elegance draped over her shoulders. As she greeted the intruders, who were justified as guests, her glowing eyes floated to find something more eventful on which to fixate. They rested at an ice cube sitting next to a butter tray. A knife still showed evidence of harming the glistening butter. The butter was warm and the ice cold and both rapidly losing life and adopting a new form, welcomed or not. Though usually not surprising, this happening dazzled her into a magic amazement. Mixed with the dancing leaf water of earlier, this was very invigorating. A man nearby was talking to another man about her.
“She sees her world through stainless steel contacts, her eyes clouded with tarnish.”
“Oh, that is discouraging.”
“Oh, yes, well you know, sometimes nothingness is the better choice.”
She heard the men talking their hollow ideas. She stood on a nearby chair, the moon exuding opulence behind her. The butter and ice had joined now. She began to sing with her tingling voice. It echoed with force and flowed majestically from her quiet mouth.
She wanders vaguely through the odorless air,
Pushing through the sleeping fog,
The hollow emotions are tearing at her feet,
Screaming to be let in.
They are at the door,
Groaning with anguish,
To be given life.
Blood drips silently
From the clouds
Spreading her song.
Her song of disturbed happiness.
They were silenced and she floated down to the Italian marble, and walked out to the garden. The fountain with the peacock on top, the rows of red and peach roses, even the statue of Zolzeulszue was a blur as she trudged to her room, her only sanctuary.
She awoke with the fear that her toes had marched off in the night, murdered, and feasted on her cat. Then they tore at her bellybutton, agonizing to be let in. She wished she was in her painting from last night. She would be the girl with a glowing face floating over the calling waves of the gem-like ocean, the moon pouring down beauty on her. Her eyelashes were drenched with sorrow. She was drowning in irony. The clouds are falling; like black confetti. The lone piano sings its keys softly, the screaming covering the enchantment. The air exhaling hollow anger, creating barriers stronger than steel. Recruiting emotions, ignored interruptions. Crying without reason; better, no attachments. The carpet embraces false love as it crashes. The colors drain. The moss is suffocating in green tranquility that really isn’t there. The gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe is glowing with desire to be unpeeled. The floating rose, gasps for air. The aphids feast. Her eyes beg for the falling leaf to land in the grass. White fuzz glimmers under her skin, trapped for eternity. The metal is a boulder, crushing her as she falls. An ant witnesses the release of an ocean’s beauty into the black velvet of the sky of night. Now the water flows in the right direction, with nothingness everywhere. She waited for her Dandelion Dreams to dance once again upon the lushness of an exuberant cloud of fluffy joy. And that day came too soon, creating an unfinished life with only one disturbance.
