Janice Commode hastily packed her essentials into a lunch bag and reached for the door. A frozen moment like a one-way bridge to oblivion. Her trembling hand extended, ready to touch the one last thing that had been solid and reliable in life: the heirloom doorknob, handed-down from her mother and her mother's mother, and through the ages. It was said to have been the doorknob of Bathsheba, Queen Nefertiti and Mrs. Santa Claus herself. In the 1800s, the brass knob was monogramed with the family crest "BC" --the initials of dynasty patriarch Bob Commode, the man who had made millions by selling trillions of penny whistles. The brilliant spherical handle mirrored Janice's bitter, tearful countenance with a merciless fisheye distortion. Yet, it was true to the grotesque distortion of her final days here, by Kenneth's side as he lay suffocating under a pile of leather footwear. Her only brother dead from an all-consuming shoe fetish, like the rest of the men in the family.
Edging ever closer, hand and doorknob squared off, as in a game of chicken. Hairline scratches now superimposed upon a woman's faded complexion. Fetches of stark reality testing tattered nerves. Now Janice wanted to savage the doorknob off its mountings like a Judo master gone ape-shit. So much lust for revenge wrapped up in one little pinky, in fact, that nothing was safe in her path. Not even a mouse.
to be continued....
4 comments:
I have never seen a penny that whistles, But I have seen a half dollar that blows..............
Okay. Im gonna get creepd out. I no it. I NO IT!
Bravo! Your use of prose.
The utter feeling of hitting beyond rock bottom conveyed in this "Opera," is like one jumping off the Empire Building, only to have "Men at Work" open a sewer hole at the last second in which one falls down deeper into a sea of crap that then saves that poor soul....who then has to endure more crap! The irony is ironic to say the least.
What is going to keep Janice alive at this point I ponder? Her memories, her dollies, her sitcoms or that damn door knob that only reflects countless sad ghosts trying to express themselves before being smashed by a hand that never notices.
And then there's old "Kenneth's side as he Lay." Is it just me, or is there some sort of subtle subliminal reference to the whole Enron debacle of a corrupt industry in bed with the government who screwing us....."Wee the People?"
Anyway, the shoe analogy is made me chuckle. I sense this dead corpse of a man who was trying to fill too many roles (symbolized by too many boots), who tries dies only in vain without his boots on becoming less then the man he never thought he was to begin with.
And it's a nice Christmasy play of words you leave us with...with the "not even a mouse" reference. Another very tragic reference to the "Happy Holidays," that has lost any kind of kindle of fun of days long gone by.
I shall stayed to my new favorite soap opera "Carousel of Our Days" until I am no longer a member of the "Human Rat Race".......
Drinking Deep from my Pen's Well,
Kurt Vonnegut
¡Enjoy Forever !
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