Lint
David Antrobus Posted on Friday, September 19, 2014 at 4:47PM 
Go away. There is lint in my head. I have no idea how it got there. What is lint? Clustered micro fabric and human skin? Uh. Could fashion a golem from it. A movie was playing earlier, The Big Sleep, Bogart and Bacall. I can't get the lint out. Sneeze it out? Cough? It's too far in. Nothing will work, not any more. I am sad Lauren Bacall died. I know Bogart also died, and he smoked like he never wanted to taste the air of this world, but that was a long time ago now, and besides, she was feisty. And elegant. It's hard to be elegant with lint in your head. I need a sugar alternative; I eat too much white death. Not in cakes and that kind of shit, but in tea and coffee. Although strictly speaking that means I drink it not eat it. Someone told me there is ground bone in white sugar. Is that true? She might have been a vegan. The person who told me that, I mean. She had an agenda maybe. Double Indemnity is another good one. Is noir a cure for lint, or a cause of it? I no longer know for sure and am paralyzed by my ignorance. Barbara Stanwyck was never paralyzed by anything. Except by death, of course. I am lying on a hot deserted highway and I can't move. I am broken. Tender shoots are crawling from the road's many cracks. I can see them growing; they're repulsive. She did kiss me once, she did. There is old blood smeared on the road's crumbling surface. Terrible wrenching things have occurred. I love the sound of coyotes, like teenagers trying on primal round a campfire. Enraged and intoxicated by life. Or should that have been with life? The syntax is slipping, words loosen. Yapping and shrieking at a moon cowering. Junior wolves. Is it night already? Am I this far from help? How can lint be so heavy? A lonely tear escapes my eye and begins its own brief story. Unremarked. Soon gone. A doctor in a dark overcoat is climbing the stairs. He is hunched and trembling under the burden of his appalling news.
Reader Comments (5)
Did a chicken leave the lint when it left? Maybe it put it there to go back for more! Maybe it is building a lint nest.
This is weird, surreal and fantastic. The last half hits it out of the ballpark and the last line is perfection. Darn you, Mr. Antrobus. How the heck do you do it?!!
Ha, I feel foolish, Gordon. You got it before I did! (See last email.)
Jo, I love last lines, so that makes me smile, that you noticed.
As always, thanks for reading. Comments are gravy. :)
Yep, that last line say it all. Wow!
Thanks for reading, Yvonne. The last line gave me goosebumps when it appeared in my head. Loved your piece on Dan's blog, too.