Day 47

Still going strong through day 47!  Fuck yeah guys.  Let's see day 94.  And on day 157 I want to know what day 315 will be like, etc.

I found an index card in my used copy of "Think and Grow Rich!" (which is a great confidence builder, by the way), that says on it:

"I am a rhinocerous!  (their spelling) I have a damn-the-torpedoes spirit!  I am full of energy and I can't wait to get up in the morning to start charging!!!"

I can't tell if that's sarcastic or not.  Looks like a woman's handwriting.

The lack of direction in my writing is always directly reflected by my lack of direction in real life.  Days when I feel like I have meaning or confidence, these things turn out a lot more well-directed.  Well written is worse than well-directed, I am starting to believe.  In other words, I know today's is bad and misdirected.  But hey, here it is.  Day 47.

            They sat stooped over the kitchen table, the man ladling generous scoops of yellow macaroni butter over Charles’s grandmothers favorite china.  It was the only dishware that Charles owned.  Charles held his hands out in front of him like Oliver Twist, the man making “oop op oop!” noises as tricky noodles attempted to slither their way out of the extension of his hand.  It was late, and the policeman out front had returned home after clearing up whatever it was he was dealing with.

            A knock sounded on the door and the creepy red man’s eyes grew large like two shriveled sponges in the rain.  He hid around the corner, Charles laughing about it and peering through the view finder into the hallway.  It was a man with a badge, the cops hadn’t all went home yet.

            “Are you Charles Lattimore?”  The man asked, exuding a Dragnet aura. 

            “Who wants to know?”  Charles responded, humoring him.

            The man scoffed and dug his finger around the orifice of his right eye.  “Well, a certain Anne Franklin has gone missing, her brother Pete called worried sick about her.  Said you might know where she is.  Now, this isn’t official police business, just a personal favor.  I find it a little suspicious you live in the same building the stabbing took place in.”

            Charles assumed it had been a stabbing once he heard it outloud, and was not at all shocked.  “I haven’t seen her since earlier today.”  He cringed with the implication of this statement.

            “Earlier today, you say?  Where were you then?”

            “Well, our company exploded,”  Charles realized how ridiculous this sounded.  Just earlier his building exploded and now he was harboring a fugitive who had broken an entry into his house.   “I was at the gas station, she was waiting in the car.  She was mad at me about something, I don’t even remember what…”

            “Fuzzy memory, huh?”  The policeman was not amused.  “What kind of relationship did you two have?  Live in girlfriend goes missing, you don’t report it, that isn’t going to look too good for you in the scheme of things.”

            The red cloaked man worked his way around the outside wall quietly brandishing a wrench he had removed from his inner breast pocket.  He gritted his teeth together and they creacked like they would crack if he bit any harder.  Charles did not show any nervousness about the action.

            “Well, officer, I wasn’t sure if she had just ran off or if she had been kidnapped.  It still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me where she went.  Now, if you’ll excuse me…”  Charles started to push the door toward the policeman, who shoved a booted foot in its path. 

            “Is there something in there you don’t want me to know about? If you want my advice, you fess up right away.” 

            “No, there’s nothing.  It’s been a long day, frankly I shouldn’t still be up.  I lost my job, my girl, my window.  I’m going back to sleep.

            “I understand, bud.”  The policeman sighed.  “We will need you to come down to the station and fill out a missing persons report within the next 48 hours, if you can.”

            “She’ll be back by then.”  Charles said, attempting to convince himself.

            The policeman touched his hat and turned around, pressing the button in on his walky talky with a flourish of static.  Charles peered past him at the end of the hallway, empty and long, desolate as it ever was.  He closed the door slowly and turned toward the man next to him, who was working fastidiously at reinserting the wrench into its original groove.

            “You don’t happen to be the stabber, do you?”  Charles turned to him, suddenly curious.

            The man fumbled the wrench inside of his robe, then turned around and retrieved it off the ground.  “I have a wrench, you can’t stab anyone with a wrench, a wrench is used for crushing and braining.”  He chuckled like he was kidding, but Charles wasn’t so sure whether he had been or not.  “Let’s get back to the macaroni.”

            They went back to the table, Charles anxiously waiting for some sort of revelation to come out of this man’s mouth.  He couldn’t help but eat the macaroni even though he tried not to like it, it just happened to be the best macaroni he had ever tasted.

            The light of the new day was dawning.  Time was passing slowly, and Charles sat staring from the distance of his kitchen table into the man’s eyes.  He was hypnotized, or mesmerized, all in all something was definitely influencing his behavior.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I need to take you with me to a site of the unknown.”  The man grumbled, unenthused.  “I don’t know if you’re ready to see it yet, but that’s where we’re going nonetheless.”

They exited and Charles followed the creep to a red hatchback Mazda Miata.  Charles knew nothing about cars, and he didn’t readily identify the “Mazda” symbol, but he used to watch a detective show where a woman driver drove a similar car.  Charles felt strangely comforted in the presence of this stranger, who smiled widely as he turned up the bass on his car stereo.  The meandering, cool bass beat of a generic jazz tune filled the chamber, the man beating his long boney fingers in rhythm on the steering wheel.

“So I’m sure you want to know where we’re going, and while I’m unhappy to say I can’t tell you who sent me, it should make you happy to know we need you.”

“Did Mr. Pulp send you?”  Charles held all the cards.

“I’m sick of hearing of this Mr. Pulp guy, no, Mr. Pulp wants you dead.”  He did not mince his words, staring sheepishly behind a equitable smile.  The car wound up a mountain pass Charles had not seen before.  He was used to taking direct routes which at this point were so rote to him that they almost seemed like the colored in portion of a  drawing.  The car wove like a needle into the eye that constantly retreated, snakishly pulling itself away down a truncating lane.

They pulled up next to what looked like an old barn.  The smell of nature mixed with the sounds of bickering forest animals, and the midnoon sun made its impression known with blandish severity.

 “Wait here just a moment”  The man said, slamming the door shut behind him.  He dragged the tremendous slat of wood which passed for a door open a few inches with exhaustive effort, slid inside and disappeared.  Charles felt he might be the unlucky recipient of a surprise party.

Charles stepped out of the car and had a cigarette in the tall prairie grass.  Chipmonks scurried through the trees, and the sunlight manifested otherwise unnoticeable webs.  In a moment of indignation, Charles thought about Anne hiding from him, or in a fit of anger he cursed her kidnappers.  He invited himself into the barn, as his impatience turned into action.

There was hay and straw, or an analgamation of both, wall to wall.  Horses and cows were absent, but their smelly leavings were still evident.  A ladder stood bathed in the light of the deteriorating ceiling boards.  At the top of the ladder, he thought for sure that he heard the red robed man speaking dispassionately, as if with head lowered to a tribunal.

Charles climbed the ladder and saw the robed man standing in front of a row of dolls, each perched up in miniature desks fashioned out of two crude pieces of wood.  The dolls were mostly made out to look female, with brown weaved hair sitting on top of pink skin.  Their eyes were buttons, lips were painted on dark red, and they wore blue and white marine color schemed dresses.  They each looked like miniature charicatures of Olive Oil from Popeye.  The man was imploring to himself, pacing with his hands behind his back on the rickety planks of the upper level.  It creaked in distress, and Charles was careful to stay on the ladder.

“They’re not here, and you’re not supposed to be here,”  The man struggled to keep his composure, but then shrugged it off and turned.  “We better leave.  They won’t know we were here, anyway.  No one will know.”

“Hold on, what are the dolls about?”  Charles felt entitled to some answers.  “What does any of this have to do with anything?  Is there any point?”  He felt trapped, while he lacked an intent or purpose to his life, this man atleast seemed to know something he didn’t.  He wondered how he was implicated in the whole mess.

“They need you now more than ever… they need you now more than… hey, what do you say let’s get out of this barn it’s starting to give me the heeby-jeebys.  The dolls aren’t dolls when you’re not here.  A lot of this is different when you’re not around.”

Charles thought he had been seeing the world through kaleidescope prisons.  He had that sneaking suspicion for awhile.  Still, it was too easy for him to believe the ridiculous claims the man stated so matter-of-factly.  He began to doubt his own minds ability to understand itself.  He wound himself up and then let the string dangle and loosen itself, expelling a huge amount of air.  If he was underwater he would have drowned.

The red Mazda Miata climbed further into the hills, like a child who was trying to prove something to his disbelieving friends.  It seemed they were ascending but never descending, only occasionally hitting stretches of straight away.  The engine was too noisy for them to talk over, with the ceaseless sound of jazz stretching the canvass.  The spring mist enveloped the car each time it ross, entering through the cracked windows.  He felt like they were passing through clouds.  The red robe turned into a white gown, and the mans skeletal figure changed into a downy unblemished figure.