Escaping the Sun

Morgan sauntered casually down the highway, now and then pausing to look into the ditch where a few children wandered, looking around with the uncertain gazes of extreme myopia, vainly searching for a mushroom or maybe a buried piece of war-time metal.

He carried with him a rinky-dink mechanical plaything, made of plastic and moving metal bits. He probed at its orifice and pulled at the fulcrum, hearing faint pangs from inside its small frame. He had found it amongst the riff-raff of things piled back at the Christmas shack.

They had built that place up from a soup of brick and quick-dry cement, almost organic, one of the few buildings in their village that didn't expand so sloppily that its edges blended together with other construction.

Morgan was coming up to the sign of their village, screwed on to a twist of lamppost. Someone had used its face as a blackboard for a few mathematical equations of a kindergarten kind, in numbers too big to ignore, and children had scrawled in chalky smiles and flowers looping the Os. You couldn't read the name anymore, but no one had used it anyway. All they knew was that they lived at 188-93 on the Mickey-Mouse military grid they all got in their kits.

Plywood shanties lined the highway all the way to the Christmas shack. Morgan threaded his way between them. Lunch was being served under calcified laundry and ripped-off awnings.

Lanely, a boy with flat oily hair, was coming out of the Christmas shack with two smaller girls. He leant down and said something to the both of them. As Morgan approached, he gestured for them to leave.

"Man, who's inside?" Morgan asked.

"A few, but Big Al inside's having a bad trip," Lanely leadenly replied.

"Really? How?"

"Ah Morgan, just shit, random shit," said Lanely, and then walked off in the direction of the two girls.

Morgan twisted the knob and yanked the door open. The room held preserved odors, stuck in the stale air. Everyone tracked dirt along the floor, crunchy to walk on, and for light they iced Christmas-bulbs along the banister and ceiling, making the inside look like a ginger-bread mansion. Big Al, a raunchy riff of sticky hair wiped across his brow, sat in a chair that was oversized to the extent that even he seemed built to a smaller scale. His hands were brittle with caked-on paint. Beside him, sitting on mats, were a few of the Christmas shack regulars, one intently wrapping string around a pipe. John was there too, sprawled out on the makeshift island in the middle of the room.

Morgan made his way to Big Al, who looked up groggily from his big chair.

"Al, what's happening?"

"I-"

"Hey, piss off," cut in the one wrapping the pipe. "Leave him alone. He's tripping hard."

Morgan shrugged and sat in one of the seedy couches.

Big Al fell back into his chair and bubbled and coughed and choked and sneezed explosively.

"Jesus Christ," the string-wrapper said.

Big Al started crying dryly, his nose snotty. Morgan watched him, watched the guys sitting at Al's feet. He was just about to coldcock the two of them with flying haymakers when Big Al started speaking:

"I've been having this dream. And you guys wouldn't believe it, but I'm seeing like this jump in Super Mario Bros happen over and over again, this same specific jump, like on that level with the green rotating platforms. But after that, the Mario, I keep having this... reoccurring dream with me being teleported to the center of the sun, its bright orange core, and it's so hot I die instantly. It's not painful; heh, don't worry. But not yet. But right after I die, like in a flash, I get reincarnated right back at the same spot that I died at. And it keeps on going like this, just flashing orange."

Everyone was quiet now, and even John was sitting up to listen, taking a break from his mellow dreams.

"So to get out, in that moment after I get reincarnated and right before I die, I swim a little. And I swim every flash. So I make my way slowly out of the core, layer by layer, getting progressively less hot and orange. But as I get further and further away into space, the longer it takes for me to die, and the more painful it gets. So when I'm way out there, like I'm almost out of the sun, I'm getting my ass chewed off by solar flares and radiation, and it gets to be too much, and I have to swim back to the center of the sun and just stay there."

"Hey, Al," said Morgan, "you alright?"

"No, man. Think before you talk, geez, heh heh."

Morgan looked around the room, at the blond wallpaper and basic wood-stove. He thought, how can days and happenings and moments so good become ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? This Christmas shack is colonized by drop-outs and flunkies and gross genetic fuck-ups that couldn't manage to call the fire-department when their house was on fire, or tripped and fell before their classmates during a talent show, or masturbate in front of their pets, all living a doomed cycle.

Morgan got up and left the Christmas shack, peeling the door from its hinges.

Lanely was outside, kissing a small girl half his size on the lips.