|
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Matthew Vita, PJ Tabit and Matthew Mercuri
I
God!
Cameron Burke leaned over the handrail to gaze up into the endlessly rising angles of concrete and steel.
What was it she had said? I suppose it
doesn’t matter. Still… things could have ended on better
terms. She had such a nice name, too. Sylvia.
He began climbing the stairs once more, allowing
all the while for one hand to slide over the railing. His eyes
wandered, settling on the occasional black mark on the
stairwell’s off-white paint.
Dr. Conroy had met her once. They argued over the
Trinity. All that hellfire and brimstone scared him away from the
Church. A shame, it’s different now. They speak in English, and
there’s even hope for suicides.
Burke stepped onto another platform, identical to
the last. His legs ached, but he paused for only a moment before
continuing his journey upward.
Still, it’s not like religion isn’t
without its difficulties. That whole thing about the gospels is odd. A
bunch of people just got together and decided which four made the cut.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They don’t agree, do they? Dr.
Conroy always complained about that. He didn’t need to bring it
into the classroom. But he did, there’s no changing that.
Yet, I followed in those footsteps. How often have I spoken about him in class?
Dr. Conroy: Question
Cameron: Answer
Dr. Conroy: Retort
Cameron: Rephrase
Dr. Conroy: Retort
Cameron: Rephrase
Dr. Conroy: Retort
Cameron: Contradiction
Dr. Conroy: Victory
But is that really him, or only what I have made of
him? He would smile in his method, sitting under that tree in the quad
where we would talk before venturing into town for a drink.
Burke, once again, arrived upon a landing.
Breathing heavily now, he peered downward over the railing and marveled
at the height he had reached. He turned his head to look up. He
didn’t seem any closer to the top. He chuckled to himself.
Is that how I’ll be remembered then? A
footnote in the works of students? Have you read so-and-so’s
book? He studied under Burke, you know. And that would be it. And which
student? Some show promise but there’s really no way to tell.
They turn bad sometimes. Alcibiades and the others got their poor
teacher killed. How much hemlock does it take?
I only wish that things had gone better with Sylvia.
II
A flickering
streetlamp illuminates the loudest house on White Street, where steady
bass escapes through cloth-covered windows. Drawn by the sound, drunken
bodies process in single file to the rear of the structure. Across the
street, uniformed pigs observe the scene. At the appropriate time, one
of them discards a spent cigarette, crushing its embers beneath his
polished boot. They walk.
On the other side of the road, two strangers lean against a doubleparked car, groping each other.
The uniforms push open the unlocked front door and
enter a dingy living room plastered with posters from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Face-down on the couch lies a vile-looking girl. Her
body gyrates above a desperate young man who gasps for air, mortified
in the realization of his mistake, his eyes locked upon the forms
plastered to the wall.
In the kitchen, the uniforms peer down a narrow
staircase leading to the crowded basement and marvel at a scrawny
man’s failed attempts to move a full keg up the stairs.
The music stops. Their presence is known!
Immediately, the crowd implodes. Seventy people
rush to the single exit. From the bathroom comes a pantless man
grasping an inflatable hula girl. He tells her he’s
sorry—he has to leave her behind. Someone, mistaking her for an
ex-girlfriend, drives a keg tap through the plastic, interrupting a
tearful goodbye. At the sight of the violence, the frail keg carrier
loses his grip, sending the aluminum barrel crashing to the basement
floor, showering the pack with beer. Drenched, a stoner loses hold of
his glass, onion-shaped bong which lands on the lifeless body of the
inflatable hula girl—not a crack!
Motha Russia!
The uniforms draw their weapons at the eastern
European accent. From the shadows emerges a fully nude Russian national
clutching a nearly empty bottle of Stoli. They order the invader to the
ground. His head rests in the bosom of the now deflated hula girl. The
uniforms break the bong over the foreigner’s head, sending bloody
shards of glass onto the beersoaked floor.
In the confusion, a child is born.
III
Perched upon
the stump of a felled sycamore, he balanced the tablet upon his knees
and, running the feather of his quill gently over the edge of his nose,
looked down upon his work. He mouthed the words slowly, smiling
occasionally with simple satisfaction. A solitary life had its
benefits, he thought.
White crests broke over the crystalblue waters of
the river beside which he sat. He watched as the current rolled into
the undergrowth, listened as the tiny waves slapped against the
smoothened bluestone. Every now and then the air of a songbird filled
the wood before disappearing into the foliage above.
Long ago, before the hairs on his chin had
surrendered their amber shade, before his mind had begun to feel the
wear of its age, he would ask his son to proof mostly everything he
wrote. The boy was quick in his wit and refined in his manners. A
natural intellect with a penchant for curiosity, the boy was considered
widely to be the double of his father, a man whom the public had adored
greatly.
But now an entire day of recollecting was wearing
the old man’s spirits thin. He felt a profound emptiness. He was
unsure of how to contact the boy, or how even to tender the resignation
of his will. He
looked down and observed a tiny line of ants which climbed incessantly
to the top of the stump, at which point they fell back to the brush.
The old man, robed in a light cotton vestment, removed his pair of
small, round spectacles and pressed his thumbs into the sockets of his
eyes. With a wistful look, he folded the document, placed it into his
vest pocket, and thus retired his busy hands.
It was time for something great. |