Ethereal Theater of the Absurd

A farcical piece.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
M.C. Guimond 6000 words
1117 SW. Alder, #208
Portland, OR. 97205
(503) 274-0258
mikegport@hotmail.com










Ethereal Theater of the Absurd


Ernest Carnation awoke, naked and crammed against other naked souls--men,
women and children, all confused and babbling inarticulately. He wiped the crust of sleep
from the inner corners of his eyes, thinking, Ain’t no fuckin’ way I’m awake. It’s another
fever dream. Hag nurse Prong said I was toppin’ 104 for chrissakes! Think back to the
bed. Ernest boxed his own ears and winced his eyes shut with enough force to make his
temples ache.
Enough of this ridiculousness! Back to the hospital. Back to betterment.
I’ll be forty next week, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll miss the bash. The Mayor’ll spring
for it. He always does. One, two, (a long prayerful pause) three! Ernest opened his eyes
and unstopped his ears. Nothing changed. Bodies slid past him, sweaty and skunk-strong.
Voices indistinguishable in the din, pleading, urgent. Pelt of woman brushed his thigh.
Two cold hands on his shoulders then gone. Ernest couldn’t turn around, so sardine-
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packed was the crowd. His eyes adjusted and started making sense of the sensate mess.
Straight up billowed bovine clouds in a purple pasture. A child’s painting, Ernest
thought, frowning. Cheap stage props in a school play. What shitty amateurism. I’m
takin’ a long break from writing when I get back to reality. No more night coffee.
“Sir, sir! Can you help me?” implored a woman’s voice. Ernest jerked from his
reverie and faced her, an ancient, diminutive thing, trembling and teeth chattering,
attempting dignity by crossing frail wrinkled arms over age-sunken breasts just above her
navel. A large black purse dangled against her small curdled buttock.
“My God, you look real,” Ernest said, then, gesturing arms to the unreal sky,
shouted, “Get me the fuck out of this nightmare!” Tears drizzled thick from the woman’s
eyes, smearing her blue mascara and mixing with the red cheek-rouge so as to make a
clown’s visage of her suffering face. She stared imploringly at Ernest, then gazed down at
his nakedness, then down at her folded arms, then down at her exposed grey-curled
womanhood, and lost it. She flung her arms against his waist, and pressed tightly
to his flesh, her face wetting his solar plexus with tears and paint.
Awkward, unhinged, freezing--It’s a goddamned dream, that’s all!--Ernest
returned the woman’s embrace, caressing her back-folds, and murmuring, “It’s ok, there
there.” Closing his eyes he thought of his aunt back in Michigan, who, though not as nuts
as this hag, used to cling to him with similar pathos.
She smells the same. Musty lilac. Rotting peaches. We’d sit on milk crates in
our underwear, our clothes pinned to a chord stretched across the kitchen. Cats
everywhere tiptoeing through the filth, her precious sick darlings, peeking in on our half-
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nakedness. Her chapped doting hands rubbing my back, soothing my sinews as she told
stories of better bygone days when she was a fashion model with Rita Heyworth looks
in the 50s. Her healing fingers, her sweet sad music-of-eternity voice, time non-
existent in the shadowy heaven of her touch. And ah, those lingering goodbye kisses in
the doorway, those tender musty Aunt-Nephew kisses on lips, on nose-tips, and rooting
my hungry nostrils in the coils of her musty lilac ear and kissing those coils over and
over, drunk on the smell of her, pulsing, throbbing from the familial crush of her,
rubbing up against the threshold of the incestuous, and once while cradling her, and
grinding against her flank I, I--
“No!” the old woman yelped. “God help me! Don’t hurt me!”
Instantly, Ernest discerned the cause of her distress. Though she now backed
away from him, his hands, which had roamed a little too low during the embrace, pre-
sently gripped her butt cheeks. Furthermore, an erection throbbed in full arousal between
his legs. The woman’s eyes were fixed to it, her mouth a ruby lipsticked O of horror. As
she squiggled to escape, Ernest saw that her wrinkled belly glistened with a slimy trail.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Ernest said. “I didn’t mean to--”
“You came on me!” she cried. “You monster! I’m so ashamed.”
“Well, well, uh, no,” Ernest said. “It’s only pre-ejaculate, madam, and this is only
a dream, you see.”
She tore free from Ernest’s grip, and tunneled through the mass of other bodies,
screaming, “Go to hell, demon. Help me God! Rape! Rape!”
Ernest followed her trek as mist curled about and obscured first her feet, then the
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rest of her. Where the fuck am I? I can’t see more than. A blinding flash from above.
Birth-flash of a gold sun. It descended with leisure, dissipating the mists, permitting
Ernest a clear view of the packed space. Turning about in a full circle, and judging the
horizon to be several miles distant, his eyes saw no breakage to the browns and pinks of
naked persons. All humanity jiggling like titties. Ernest smiled at the thought. A new
sound introduced itself, a harp-plucking leitmotif barely audible between lapses in the
babbling. Ernest closed his eyes, concentrated on it, and heard a chorus of child-voices.
Here and now I take charge of this dream. Rise in volume. Louder I say. In-
stantly, the choral melody drowned all competing sounds. If this be heaven let me stay,
Earnest thought, seeking earthly analogs but not finding. Ode to Joy is not even close.
This is more sublime, more intricate--it’s an aural love-gush of healing, it’s an all-
surround-sound hosanna hymn of praise, it’s a lovely tender--
DID ONE OF YOU PUNIES CRY OUT FOR GOD’S ASSISTANCE? boomed
the voice from the sun, pulsing in phosphorescent green and purple along its spherical
surface above the quivering congregates. Ernest eyed the thing and gulped. What did
they slip me in the hospital? he thought, sweat chilling his naked flanks. Psilocybin mush-
rooms? DMT?
DO NOT CONFUSE GOD WITH A FABRICATING FUNGAS, PUNY
MORTAL!
“What? You’re not a psilocybin production?”
I AM THAT I AM!
“But this is my dream. I hereby--”