Stories to ponder. – Page 62 –

Once, our planet was just a thought in the mind of a novelist…

Billions over billions over billions of years ago, in a far galaxy, there existed an alien humanoid with a very odd, but highly creative, idea…

At eight o’clock on Monday morning LaCoke Doosh did not feel particularly good. He struggled to his feet, got up, wandered bleary-eyed ‘round his large room, opened his Roman-style arched windows, stuck out his head to breathe in fresh air, saw a bulldog, and let out a most foul language when bird-droppings landed right on his head. “MOTHER******!”

That was when one of his neighbors heard him, Mrs. Nagalot. A sixty-three lightyear old widow that LaCoke didn’t like that much–actually not at all. She didn’t like him either, or people, period! “Hey, put a damn sock in it, Doosh! Some of us like mornings without your potty mouth!!” she yelled from her patio.

He reached for a towel on the chair which was next to the window. “Sorry, Mrs. Nagalot!” he said with a big, teeth-filled smile, while also wiping the bird caca from his face. “…You old bag.” He made sure that that last one was only for himself to hear. Dropped the towel onto the floor and shot a look at his messy room. “Ugh– I’ll clean it up sometime. Now I gotta whiz like a race horse!” Found his slippers and stomped off to the bathroom to do his business.

After shower, toothpaste on the brush so— Scrub.

After scrubbing, a few gargles to kill bad breath— Shinny smile. “Damn–” He felt some pressure within the plumbing. Then some silent and toxic gases left the building.

Shaving cream and Trimette razor spotted. Crooked shaving mirror—he adjusted it just right. A few funny faces, while looking for wrinkles and adoring his new nose. For a moment, the mirror reflected a second bulldog in his room— Oh, how he hated that nasty bulldog Mrs. Nagalot had gotten as a gift on her sixty-first lightyear birthday! It would make the little hairs on his ass stand up. Properly adjusted the mirror, it also reflected LaCoke Doosh’s awkward sideburns. He shaved them off, washed, dried and went downstairs to get some breakfast.

Kitchen scene— Plug-in, coffeemaker, sugar, cup, spoon, Supernova’s coffee cakes. Fridge— Milk, cream, Coca Cola. Yawn.

The image of his creation wandered throughout his wobbly mind in search of something to connect with or to focus on. The sole word, he thought it was cool. Maybe even his best creation yet. “Readers will love it.”

He stared at it.

Blue. It is a good color, isn’t it? He took the last sip of coffee and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed.

Passing a large, squared mirror which was hanging from the circular wall next to his bedroom, he peered with more detail at his ugly reflection on it. Mmmm– Something was odd. Definitely uglier this morning. He then began to suspect that he was hangover. . . Why am I hangover? Didn’t drink that much last night. Only twenty rocket beers. Thirty cherry ass-blasters. And, umm, five pipe rusters. But due to the late, slight pounding in his head and the bags around his eyes, he supposed he could be. He then caught a glint in the mirror. “Blue?… Blue…,” he hissed, and kept on to the bedroom.

He paused in place and thought, Try harder, c’mon… The pub!, he mused excitedly. Oh flicksters, the pub! He vaguely remembered being angry, defending something that meant a lot to him. Something that seemed very important at the time. He’d been telling people about it. They had asked him. At his greatest visual recollection, that was of glazed looks on people’s faces, he saw them laughing at his idea until puking, mocking it terribly. Mocking the new sci-fi novel he was writing. I mean, it was a good idea. The fact that the High Council hadn’t created a new planet in a hundred lightyears weighted, some people even had forgotten that they still did that. What do they know? They are just drunkies! He championed the idea all the way, and he thought that a planet of mostly water wasn’t that ridiculous to begin with anyway.

God!– What a terrible hangover it had earned him though. Terrible because it was growing and sounding like a loud banging of drums. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his hairy, purple tongue– “Aaaaaahh!…” Blue, he thought.

The word ‘blue’ wandered through his wobbly mind in search of something to connect with…

Blop– Blop– Globules of dreams. Spherical forms of happiness and misery. Color changing bubbles reflecting her soul and mine, what was gained, what was lost. At times red. At times blue. At times bright recollections, thousands of them, of a past alive and fresh. At times obscure reminders, millions of them, of a past so miserable and frustrating which I could not bear for the life of me.

Blop– Blop– The new house on the valley of roses and thorns. That fateful night of pure romance. My soul-twin. And the warm touch of her hand. The faucet dripping. The cat which I never loved. Those Teddy bears which mocked me when I passed our room. I had made my demands and she had made hers, but it all had been a whirlwind and no one had known what had happened. I did swim deeply in the love she had offered, even though I had hated her amusements and characters. And so she had hated mine.

Blop– Blop– We had been lovers and enemies. I see that through the bubbles now. I surrender to many things now, my immaturity and blindness, my ego and arrogant ways… But I recognize now through the color-changing bubbles that my surrendering comes too late. Too late. The car had deviated from its path and the bridge had marked the next event, and so it had been too late for us… The bubbles… The bubbles were awaiting patiently. And maybe. Maybe it was written in the stars. Maybe it was written in our souls. Only God knows that.

Blop– Blop– The depth is incredible, there are fish here and it is beautiful, spirits of love and tenderness among my recollections of happiness and sadness; I keep seeing through its mirror, I keep seeing her and she smiles. And our flesh and thought is old now, dying, dead, because of the bubbles, and because of the car… The car which forged our destiny, the end of our happiness and misery, the end of our love and hate.