NEW MEMORIES

It doesn’t seem real to me.
You did things tonight you never do.
I know it’s not you.
Something’s come and broken us in two.

Time-Time-Time passes.
Leads me to you.
I-I knock gently.
Call your name, too.

Catch my face in the mirror as I run for the keys.
I hear the water forcing new memories on me.

It doesn’t seem real.





TODAY WAS DIFFERENT

May 15th

Once upon a time, a boy named Bicycle Jerry came whooshing and darting down Baker Road on his puce Huffy ten-speed. He grinned and shouted happily, whooping like an Indian and ringing his little bell down that quiet suburban street. The wind was screaming in his ears and his heart pumped like thunder in his throat.

He was on his way back from Farnucci’s bakery.
So, with a twelver of hot fresh donuts in a pink box secured to the back of his bike seat, he headed home to watch some tube and do his Special Ed homework.

Bicycle Jerry didn’t have any friends. He was what a lot of people call...slow. Mildly retarded. Kids can so often be cruel, and he was usually taunted by them at school to shouts of, “Hey-hey, Jerry you idiot!” and “Tardo Fat-Tardo Fat, check for fudge where Jerry sat!”
Usually, this rolled off Jerry’s back, but today was different.

Down the road apiece there was a group of neighborhood nasties who called themselves the Baker Road Stilettos. They were led by the nastiest kid of all, Ronny Backensteel. The rotten boys were busy hammering rusted nails into the tops of fences around the houses of the kids they hated. This was great fun when the unsuspecting kid would sneak out at night and rush out to hop his fence. The next thing he knew he had a hand shredded beyond recognition.

Ronny had just put the finishing touches on a dangerous impaler outside Sammy Splanders’ yard, when he heard a familiar sound. The sound that brought a pang of elation to his dark little ticker. A bicycle bell! And happy shouting!!

“Cool,” thought Ronny. “Now, we’ll see some action.”
“It’s the tard!” he screamed and the boys were on their heels running quickly out to the street where the joyous sounds were coming from.

Bicycle Jerry looked up just in time to see the fist. But, not in time to stop the fist, although the fist stopped him. CRACK! went Bicycle Jerrys’ five favorite teeth and his bicycle went home without him. His back hit the blacktop with a heaving thud, and his thrown back head clipped his own shoulder blades before coming to an scuffing stop at an angle alien to a human body.

Ronny Backensteel laughed and spat out a rope of chocolatey phlegm.
“Heh heh, how was your trip there, donut boy?” He taunted.
Bicycle Jerry didn’t answer.

“I said how was your trip, bananahead? Whattaya deaf?”
He walked toward the crumpled boy and that was when he saw the dark spreading stain seeping out of Jerrys’ left ear.
“Uh oh.” muttered Ronny.
“Oh my God...you killed him, Ronny!” said Pete Whiskett, who up until now had his middle finger shot up and waving in Jerrys’ direction.
“I couldn’t have...I only tapped him,” pleaded Ronny.

The street was too quiet. The birds stopped singing. The dogs stopped barking. All the regular street sounds now broke off as if suddenly sealed behind the world’s biggest door.

Then, little wounded Bicycle Jerry stirred. A groggy peep emitted from his torn and smashed mouth. Ronny ran up and knelt beside him.
“Hey, donut boy. You okay?” he said.
“Come to me,” groaned Jerry spitting out shards of enamel and gravel.
Ronny bent down. “What is it?”
Almost whispering, Bicycle Jerry said, “Eternal thunder. Forever black fire. The shroud of infinity. Coldest death from head to feet.”

Then, Bicycle Jerry died, slipping into the other world.

Ronny’s eyes filled with a thousand tongued fear.
“No! No! You lousy fat pile of crap! Oh, why me?” He looked up at his friends, but they were gone. They’d run away scared.
“Lousy yellow chickens!!” screamed Ronny, and he stood there alone on the street with the corpse of the donut boy.

And that’s when the first real pain hit him.
The feeling that someone was ripping through his intestines with a white hot straight razor. He fell to his knees and as his weight hit the pavement, giant slabs of his skin slid off his bones and hit the road with a wet slap. He tried to scream blood and murder, but his tongue had turned into a clod of maggots that slurped and gurgled in his teeth and down his windpipe. The digits of his fingers and toes caught fire and melted away like burning Crayolas leaving flesh colored drips in the gutter. He shrieked with a madman’s horrors, then his heart burst in his chest, filling his lungs with blood, adrenaline and stomach bile.

Moments later, he lay dead beside Jerry. The birds began to sing again. And somewhere in the other world, Jerry licked the cherry jam from his fingers and dug into a maple bar, and didn’t have to do his homework after all.