The tell-tale printer

In the cold, darkness of a poorly insulated house, the light from the power button of our wireless printer pulsates like the beating of a elderly heart. It sits there on the desk with as much dust as any antique and the same amount of judgement as it fills the room with light and then returns me to a resting room.

It repeats this action: light that fills the ceiling like some projection of a mid-summer dream and then darkness where I sense the calmness and verisimilitude of dignified reality. Then as I get used to the darkness the joy of the ceiling light comes back, only to return me to the now petulant darkness. Then light! Oh such light that lasts an instant and shows me all the things in my messy room I thought I'd lost. Now darkness! Wretched terrible darkness and light!...

I can't take it anymore and I go for its life blood! I turn the overhead light on and the room fills with the dirty yellow light from the single room light above me. Half asleep, I rummage around the back of the printer for its jugular.

It's difficult to find and for a moment, I wonder if there even is one? Have I killed this agonizingly beautiful creature which pulsates vacillating light and darkness as part of its waking dream? Does it think of my snores as a paltry annoyance and wish it could turn me off as I sleep beneath it's heart beat and am bothered by its perturbing yet necessary life?

As the 1/2 second ends that I think all of this, I find its chord and it turns out it's just a printer and inanimate object after all. I rip it's chord from its backside and shout, "you're dead now you flickering bastard!"

Yet as I go to sleep, the thoughts of my friend the printer haunt me and I think of how it's been doing that for years now and never have I unplugged it. Yet in the end, darkness is truth and I tend to sleep better without light, however small or bright.

I drift off to sleep with the dead things all around me. Sweet sleep at last.

Highway to hell

The highway elongated in front of Jack's cranium. His eyes weighed like thousand pound weights. He felt himself swerve slightly as he held his neck from a shooting pain that seemed to arise when he had turned his head to follow an eager BMW driver; the sun, flashing in his eyes, he swerved back towards the road and away from the median.

"Goddamn BMW drivers! They're all assholes! Every fucking one!" He said as driving began to return to normal.

A fog began to gather as large bushy clouds rolled in overhead and Jack began to think about his family. His little boy smiled at him in his head and his wife said, "just come home safe," as he thought about her beautiful curls around his shoulders caressing him to her heavenly embrace.

He decided he would call her but as he called, the phone would just ring and ring and ring with no answer or even a message machine. He hung it up as he meandered through this eternal road.

He began to think about all the bad things he'd done in his life and the bad things he'd recently done on the trip he was on. The fog seemed as thick as water as he looked out on the road and couldn't see even a mile down the road.

As he tried to slow down to stop, he found that he couldn't move his leg; it was glued to a constant speed going down the highway.

He tried his radio and Enya began to play. He began to scream. He tried to roll down the window and the fog that rolled in was steam.

Suddenly, the Enya halted and a voice spoke, "welcome to hell, you cursed the Lord while driving and so you shall now drive for all eternity to remind you of your blasphemy."

The highway elongated in front of Jack's cranium. His eyes weighed like thousand pound weights. His heart raced and he only begged for sleep and a crash so the road would end.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT

The following message reads as dictated from Col. Ronald T. Harris of Baton Rouge LA to Stg. Michael Wayneright of Chicago IL. Their position at the time of dictation was unknown but is assumed as well into the country of Cambodia in Eastern Asia.

Boy... I mean Mikey... Mike or do you prefer Michael? In any case, I want you to copy this down as if I made it, y'see? I want this to be read to my kids, kids as if grandaddy was telling it to 'em, ya get me? Mike, what have I gotten myself into this time? Promise me you'll change that bloody outfit before you recount this tale. Oh I talk too much. Well, here goes:

Back in my war days, I used to tell the boys who were waiting to ship out, in officer's bar in Saigon: "you gonna wind up like Mikey," and I don't think any of 'em ever got it. You see, they'd all joke and clown about a lot but I only told this to the strong ones.

Of course, all they saw was that Mikey was a lower pay grade and they thought I meant that they would end up on the bottom of the barrel like Mikey: Doing the grunt work, digging out the latrine and making dirt pay to do it; what they didn't see is that the reason Mikey was assigned so many tasks, regardless of how much he made was because Mikey was the fastest to dig a trench or a fox hole; he was the quickest to go from cover to cover, he got the most consecutive gook kills and at the end of the war, he was the only one of those bastards still alive. That said, that last one is an achievement I couldn't even attain. I wish I had "been like Mikey" in that regard...

You take this message back to Saigon now. You survive and don't make a liar out of me. Be an example to my boys.

ADDENDUM:

I dug a fox hole just like he always told me I could and covered it with leaves. Then carried his body on my shoulders until I hooked up with an attachment at the border and we got on a bird to head back to Saigon for debriefing. On my way back, I had been hit in the calf by grenade flack but the wound wasn't as serious to me as it was to the medics. I was discharged to bring this letter home and am available for comment in Washington DC at REDACTED FOR PRIVACY REASONS.

Sincerely,
Stg. Michael M. Wayneright