Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse

He buried his head in his hands and sobbed. After a bit, Arnold peeked through his fingers at the others. They had returned to their conversations, they were chattering away like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t just been weeping, big fat tears running down his cheeks, snot on his face. This is weird, he thought. Can’t they see that I’m suffering, that I’m in pain? Don’t they feel any sympathy for a fellow human animal?

                Hello? he said.

                No one answered.

                He got up, walked into the center of the room, said, Hey, motherfuckers, I’m talking to you!

                A guy named Jonathan made a reference about a popular TV show, everyone in that corner of the room tittered at his observation, but no one looked at Arnold. No one cared what Arnold had to say, even though he said the same thing Jonathan said. “Why  don’t I get treated fairly around here, I bust my ass working two jobs after school and this is the thanks I get. I ran outside and ran to the nearest park I could find. The Memorial Park on Bryant Avenue is where I ended up. As I came to a stop I realized that my mouth tasted like blood and my legs felt like heavy metal weights. The crisp fall air and the florescent lights from the streetlamp got brighter by the second making my wounds more noticeable.

I began to get nervous not sure of what was happening around me, but I had to get my thoughts clear, I had to get my story right.  What was next to come was uncertain but I was prepared for anything. I would tell the cops anything to get myself out of this predicament even if I was guilty, this was a secret I will take with me to the grave. My wife would not have been ready to hear the truth and I was not ready for her to know. So as the cops arrived I pretended not to look so distraught. I was shaking, nervous, terrified.

“Hello, how are you?” asked one of the cops.

“What’s the problem he asked gingerly? The person replied my whole life is in shambles and

“I don’t generally like people like you”. “People like you deserve to die and go to hell” I angrily said.

I mean what kind of people don’t give their seat to the elderly on the bus. They’ve seen some shit, give them a break and get the fuck up.

I mean I’ve got business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore, business in Baltimore. “What the hell is in Baltimore?” 

“Don’t worry about it.”

“If you refuse to tell me, I won’t go with you. I’ll jump out of a moving vehicle if I have to.”

“Fine.”

“Oh, it’s fine, is it? But, you know, I was crying and no one seemed to give a shit.”

“Well, we just didn’t notice. We’re flawed human beings. We can’t notice everything. It’s humanly impossible. We’re not gods, we’re not omniscient.”

And with those last words spoken, the author turned off his computer, pleased with his work, sure that his words would live for years to come, that they would stretch into infinity and people would celebrate them and mimeograph them and send them out into the ether of the internet and recite them at grade school pageants and utter them in the midst of sexual congress and chant them at political rallies and sing them in church and that, eventually, the words would cease to be a story, but instead a language, the language that all speak, that all communicate with, a true Esperanto, the language of the human.