As Jules heard the alarm scream bloody hell behind him, he remembered: the boy said ‘applause’ when he asked for the applesauce, reaching with his arm, as though his growth spurt would occur at just the right moment. When he first met him, he would correct him, calling him silly, and cute. For months the boy would say ‘applause’ instead of applesauce. There were days in which there was no applesauce in yellow and bottom-brown tinged Frigidaire, but the boy would still make the same mistake, looking into the periphery, away from his mothers dry, drooping eyelids, into the eyes of Jules.
After months without applesauce in the Frigidaire and the constant asking, asking for ‘applause’, Jules stopped having the sympathetic eye. He stopped calling the boy silly, instead snapping at the boy to stop annoying him, to leave him alone, that he is being ridiculous, weird.
“There is no applesauce, listen.” Jules said with his hands raised, as a shaking frame to his face.
Later, the boy set aflame the thick, heat trapping curtains in his, his sisters’, and his mothers bedrooms.
Jules remember this. Jules held on to this. Jules thought of applause as he walked away, avoiding the cracks of the grainy sidewalk. The gem in the sandy brown sack. He felt as though deserved a round of applause. The gem was the applesauce.
Into the back of the french cafe, he staggered in. People didn’t see him, they smelled him. The blood spilling from his heart, seeping through the cracked dam of his hands was putrid, smelling of rotten strawberries that had reached their end of their ripening long before the bullet. “Est-ce l’office de docteur?”, he exhaled. “peut-etre”
I have a really great phone. I got it last year and the salesman was a really nice guy. He told me he would “hook me up” with the special features. Boy, did he. One that I really like is an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia, in my pocket at all times! I use it a lot when I watch TV, like, when I’m watching a nature and they talk about frogs. I can use the encyclopedia to find out more about that frog. My favorite frog is the White’s Tree Frog. Oh, it’s green and ugly and fat. Usually, the White’s Tree Frog is four inches, can live up to sixteen years. If it was a human the frog would have a license to drive. I bet, if it drove a Volkswagon Beetle, it would be hungry all the time. I told that joke to the guy who sold the phone to me and he thought it was funny too. Then he told me about a feature on the phone that is like a joke data-base. I love that feature.
She thought to herself, he still thinks my name is Bernadette, as she circled her kitchen table for, what seemed, the thousandth time. Her walls were checkered black and gray and white and red and ashtrays were seemingly random raindrops on the kitchen table. There must have a torrential rainfall. She circled the kitchen table and ashed her cigarette whenever she passed one of these ashtrays. Some were crystal, plastic, clay. Some were bought at retail stores, some she made at her art class in the community center two blocks away, and some weren’t even ashtrays at all such as the litter box she kept on the floor for her cat Genevieve.
He must have known her name wasn’t Bernadette. She knew she looked a Naoko or Yoko, but definitely not like a local. He would tell her, as he ashed his cigarette in the cat-shaped ashtray on her bedstand, that he liked her because of her exoticness. She never felt exotic only, possibly, esoteric.
F.Lee
8408 Buttersuckle Dr.
Colon Michigan, 49040
Dear Mr. Lee,
I regret to inform you that this is your last warning from the Cleveland Department of Parking
and Vehicular Manslaughter. If you continue to ignore our warnings we will, unfortunately, send this to Vehicular Manslaughter in accordance with the Driver Responsibility and State Debt Reduction Act of 2009.
Please act! You have more chance to pay your debt to society for DISORDINATE AMOUNT OF COMMODIOUS AREA BETWEEN BACK PASSENGER TIRE AND CITY STREET CURB. You have two weeks from the time the postage date to respond and if you fail to respond we will be forced to take action:
1) In accordance with the Driver Responsibility and State Reduction Act of 2009 we will take possession of your car and sell it off for parts. We will first attempt to appease your need to purchase the car by selling it for parts at Ohio State Pawn. You will have two months from the selling date to repurchase your parts if you have previously paid off your debt to the state. However, in accordance with the Debt Reduction, Payment, and Ohio State Pawn Clause of 2009, you will be forced to pay the SRP.
2) In accordance with the Driver Responsibility and State Reduction Act of 2009 Article 35, we will take possession of your house, and proceed to sell the building at auction to the bidder with the quickest bid. We will not wait for to vacate the area and during the pre-auction tour (which begins at 5:30 am) we will tour your house with, as per usual, 35 potential bidders. We will survey the kitchen, the bed rooms ( We recommend having children, if any, stay at a grandparents house during this time due the trauma children accrue when waking to 35 strangers surrounding their bed at 5:30 am)
If you continue to neglect your responsibility to the state of Ohio and its citizens we will then charge you with Vehicular manslaughter. I have been told to tell you, Mr. Lee, that because of your immense failure to pay your parking violations, you are taking money away from the state and away from worthy social programs. You have recently heard of the hard economic times and please please, the government needs your payment more than you do.
In accordance with the bylaws, of Driver Responsibility and State Reduction Act of 2009, there will be no trail. You will be immediately convicted with Vehicular Manslaughter and because of your immense two year neglecting of payment there will not be any avenues for appeal. If you continue to ignore your debt to society, you patriotic duty, and sense of loyalty to these United States and, in particular, this state of Ohio then, then your sentence to your conviction of Vehicular Manslaughter will be manslaughter by vehicle. You will be tied, gagged, stripped naked, beat, and have a water hose on you for three days without the ability to dry off. A brand new vehicle from the backbone of America, Associated Motors, freshly drive off the lot at a discount price, will then be driven towards you at speeds in excesses of 30 MPH. This lower speed will cause more agony and elongate the duration of your death (this is an added bonus, seeing as speeds any higher would also cause the fuel tank to implode).
So Mr. Lee, I implore you to pay your debt to society of $35.00 for DISORDINATE AMOUNT OF COMMODIOUS AREA BETWEEN BACK PASSENGER TIRE AND CITY STREET CURB. DISORDINATE AMOUNT OF COMMODIOUS AREA BETWEEN BACK PASSENGER TIRE AND CITY STREET CURB. Pay your debt for good of this country, world, and finally your health.
Sincerely,
Miss. Jan Blue
The shirtless Boy said, “I am now invisible and no one, not the dragons or the bad guys or Mom, can see me.” He ran short circles about the bedroom, with his bare chest thrust out and he said, “Now I can soar past the dragons and I can see the bad guys and I can see Mom. She is in the shower and all the bad men are trying to talk to her. Don’t talk to them Mom! Don’t do it! Talk to Me, to Me!”As the shirtless Boy coasted down, unnoticed, he thought to himself, I will not fly anymore, but I am, and always will be, invisible.”
I’ve been trying to figure out how to narrate from within the paranthesis. I have been wanting to take an interview and then add narration in the form of (___). However, one of the roadblocks is making it seem as though what I am trying to do is interpret, or, “this is what he really means”. However, I think I have found the perfect candidate to this with. An icon with Americana dripping over his shoulders…
I ditched the idea of the toll-booth from the POV of a dime, if for nothing else, I decided writing with the voice of an inanimate object creates an inanimate voice. However, I am thinking of taking an interview and adding a paranthetical narration ( an already existing interview and adding the subconscious). This isn’t really original (see: Brief Interviews, Frost/Nixon) but an interesting idea nonetheless. If for nothing else, I believe, that clauses within parentheses reveal what is truly important to the voice speaking these clauses (for example: what really matters is not the idea I am writing about but that I have the self-conscious need to beat my point into your head so you agree with me).
Also, Today was the first (albiet, thoroughly informal) meeting of the summer writing group. It will be interesting. We have our first “meeting” next Wednesday at the Chicory (1:00 pm). I will not be there. However, the most imporant thing about the summer writing group, is simply to have a “responsibility” (I use the term loosely). What matters is the text. Always, Always, the text is sovereign. It is not about the romanticism of being writer, and it is not about the “writerly” way of life. It is the actually writing that makes us writers.
Writing idea: take a cliche and blow it up like a helium balloon, let go of the string, watch it fly off, and wait for it to pop somewhere in the atmosphere.
