It don't matter much if we keep in touch.
May 25, 2020 22:43:55 GMT -5
đť“”đť“đť“𝓲𝓮 đť“śđť“ľđť“»đť“𝓮𝓻 and Buddy Winchester like this
Post by pretzelbender on May 25, 2020 22:43:55 GMT -5
Curly midwestern blonde hair, greasy and unwashed, stick to the forehead of the walking tomb of a young man. Fog clings to the still night air of Red Cliff, the streets dark and wet. The lanky boy is frozen in place, shivering from the cold, from fear. He clenches his fists and relaxes them repeatedly; the throbbing coming from the bandages under his left hand relaxing him slightly.
Wide eyes look around, for a face to lash out at. For someone to blame. There have been more people than usual, newer people that he’s never seen before filling shoes found in graves.
In the late 1960s, John B. Calhoun conducted a vast experiment where he observed the behavior of mice in a steadily growing population. Overpopulation showed to be the demise of civilization for this universe of mice, who found social roles quickly filled and strayed from usual interaction. They became violent, neglectful, vain and socially isolated. They stopped caring for their young. For themselves. Some rats stood in the middle of the chaos of too many bodies and attacked randomly. Some began cannibalizing each other. Others were listless.
From these experiments, Calhoun coined the term “behavioral sink,” the decline of acceptable and socially just behavior as a result of overcrowding until collapse.
Nothing seems to have changed and his attention and anxiety get divided easily when he’s not hiding. Some days, he doesn’t see anyone at all. Tonight is just like that. Overcrowding in the town of Red Cliff shouldn’t be an issue at all. Yet, this young man, our hero, stands in the middle of this town. Shaking, stripped down to black boxer briefs; his body covered in healing and fresh bruises, scrapes and cuts and deep red marks bitten in. Don’t be alarmed, these are his usual injuries. Yes, poor boy has nothing on as he begins to walk, his naked feet padding against the wet concrete.
This is Miles Lucky and he’s seemingly in the middle of a behavioral sink.
There’s too many new faces, too many greetings and too many names to keep track of, too many schedules to write down on a single page. They could be watching, listening. They could be planning to string him up, devour him piece by piece. Miles thinks of these things often, Miles doesn’t trust anyone. Miles is suspicious and snaps easily. Yes, we’ve said before he is like an enclosed animal. In a world full of rats, Miles stands in the middle of it all and attacks.
But, it’s not that easy, is it? Miles is lost as he walks and it looks as if he’s walking in circles. Even if he doesn’t notice it right away, we do. We know, we all do. We’re all watching him and in watching him, we know that he was like this before anyone ever stepped foot in town. This behavior isn’t the result of anything that can be pinpointed, but rather something excelled in sudden change. Miles has always been like this and he’s just getting worse in the face of everything presented to him.
So, in a world full of rats, Miles stands in the middle of it all and attacks. Or rather, in a world full of rats, Miles is a pigeon that crashes in the middle of it all and attacks. Thus, something that can’t be explained.
How’s that, we’ve gone in circles too, haven’t we? Right back at the beginning, we know nothing more about the head of Miles Lucky and Miles Lucky is back under a street light. He pulls at his hair, and shakes his head. Miles tries to remember how he got outside. He doesn’t recall and for a moment, his eyes water in frustration. However, he sucks it up, as there is no time to cry. There’s a warm room waiting for him to lock himself behind the door of. There’s an unplugged TV sitting in silence and a mannequin awaiting the news of the day.
Miles presses on and tries to calm himself down, rubbing at his left hand. With the tooth of Indi Rhyder lodged under growing skin beneath, the bandages have become a security blanket. He hasn’t changed them in a week. It’s a dangerous thing, the game he’s playing at, the sudden interest he has in trophies. In pieces of others.
Miles turns the corner and pauses, his worn out sneakers abandoned in the middle of the road. He approaches them and slips them on, grateful for something on his feet as he wanders along with his mind, stumbling across Willie Pete once again. Once again, because Miles' mind has been disgustingly filled with the man and his silence and his life. Miles can’t stop thinking about him, about how predictable he is, how easily explained.
“There we go,” Miles says as he walks, his breath visible. “Willie Pete is the rat.”
Is he talking to us? Probably. He brings it together, the point of this all. Willie Pete holds the shades of a well known experiment. He’s well documented. He’s been done again and again. There’s hundreds of him.
“It must be such a relief, Willie,” Miles says enviously, stopping to gather a stray shirt on the ground and throw it on. He’s retracing his own steps through clothing. It’ll work for now. “It must be such a relief to be you. I can’t even imagine it, I want it so bad. You wake up and you look in the mirror and you know why you are the way you. You know why you’re slightly tilted, a little strange, just a foot from being insane. Every flinch and fear, every single ounce of insecurity in your bones - you know exactly what to put it on, you know where it came from.”
Finally, he finds some pants and slips them on as quickly as possible. He feels a pressure in his head that makes him blink harshly a few times before sighing. His clothes are covered in mud. He chews at his lips and shrugs.
“Do I know? Who knows. It could be all the drugs you pump into your system that make you ridiculous and talented. It could be some bad childhood that drives you to be a champion. It could be this deep, dark emptiness inside of you that made you fall into the shadow of a woman you can’t wrap your head around.” And how does he even know about her? For all the things he doesn’t know, he’s surprised to know anything at all. His hand throbs and he looks at it, studying his fingers before diving in for a piece to chew. He speaks between the skin in his mouth.
“I don’t know, but you do and that’s enough. That would be enough for me; to know why I do the things I do. To know why I can’t stop eating my own skin. To know why eating the skin of someone else makes me happy.”
Miles finds a pair of socks and rolls his eyes, kicking off his shoes and sitting down to slip them on. It’s a warm little moment, that almost makes you forget about the dread in the air, the thick fog. The impending doom he seems to be approaching. He jumps back up to his feet and shakes his head, looking around once more to see if there’s any source to the anxiety that’s growing in him. There’s nothing, so he continues on, the way he speaks becoming more rushed.
“You end up in the middle of a town in your drawers and you know why. It’s a lucky thing and I hate you for it. I want that, I want your simple fucking head. I want your bones, I want to feel how easy it is to fall asleep in that tripped up skeleton. I want anything, Willie.
Anything at all, do you understand? Any part of you and if nothing else, that title works. I can take that, I can fill your shoes and it’ll be like you never existed at all. I can go into battle, you can be a part of me. I’ll be the Worse Horse you couldn’t be, the Stanley to your Clockwork. For all you know of yourself, it won’t matter. And what the heck. You and me. Maybe we’re both a little fucked up. Maybe we’re both creeps. Maybe we live in rooms that are too dirty and get hurt just for the sake of feeling something beyond what we do to ourselves. We’re a lot alike. But we have something that’s different between us.”
The road leads to the gas station. Miles sees it in the distance and for all the town is, he considers the establishment and the person inside a safe haven. Coffee always doesn’t sound so bad. His flannel is in the lot. He makes his way to it.
“When you die, that’ll be it. They’ve seen you before. When I die, they’ll cut open my brain just to see what crawls in the middle.”
Miles picks up the flannel and shoves his arms into the sleeves, straightening it out.
“This is your chance, Willie. I become a champion and you become part of my legacy, you become immortalized. They’ll open it up and see a piece of you inside. I can carry the both of us forever. What do you say?”
When Miles Lucky looks up, he sees himself standing there in the same clothes. Miles eyes widen. He’s terrified. He opens his mouth to say something, but the other him raises his arm. His fingers in the shape of a gun, it’s familiar. He shoots and Miles goes down. The second Miles begins to drag his body in the direction of the motel, but stops for a moment to look at us. His smile is just as uneasy as it always is.
“Happy Pigeon Day.”
Wide eyes look around, for a face to lash out at. For someone to blame. There have been more people than usual, newer people that he’s never seen before filling shoes found in graves.
In the late 1960s, John B. Calhoun conducted a vast experiment where he observed the behavior of mice in a steadily growing population. Overpopulation showed to be the demise of civilization for this universe of mice, who found social roles quickly filled and strayed from usual interaction. They became violent, neglectful, vain and socially isolated. They stopped caring for their young. For themselves. Some rats stood in the middle of the chaos of too many bodies and attacked randomly. Some began cannibalizing each other. Others were listless.
From these experiments, Calhoun coined the term “behavioral sink,” the decline of acceptable and socially just behavior as a result of overcrowding until collapse.
Nothing seems to have changed and his attention and anxiety get divided easily when he’s not hiding. Some days, he doesn’t see anyone at all. Tonight is just like that. Overcrowding in the town of Red Cliff shouldn’t be an issue at all. Yet, this young man, our hero, stands in the middle of this town. Shaking, stripped down to black boxer briefs; his body covered in healing and fresh bruises, scrapes and cuts and deep red marks bitten in. Don’t be alarmed, these are his usual injuries. Yes, poor boy has nothing on as he begins to walk, his naked feet padding against the wet concrete.
This is Miles Lucky and he’s seemingly in the middle of a behavioral sink.
There’s too many new faces, too many greetings and too many names to keep track of, too many schedules to write down on a single page. They could be watching, listening. They could be planning to string him up, devour him piece by piece. Miles thinks of these things often, Miles doesn’t trust anyone. Miles is suspicious and snaps easily. Yes, we’ve said before he is like an enclosed animal. In a world full of rats, Miles stands in the middle of it all and attacks.
But, it’s not that easy, is it? Miles is lost as he walks and it looks as if he’s walking in circles. Even if he doesn’t notice it right away, we do. We know, we all do. We’re all watching him and in watching him, we know that he was like this before anyone ever stepped foot in town. This behavior isn’t the result of anything that can be pinpointed, but rather something excelled in sudden change. Miles has always been like this and he’s just getting worse in the face of everything presented to him.
So, in a world full of rats, Miles stands in the middle of it all and attacks. Or rather, in a world full of rats, Miles is a pigeon that crashes in the middle of it all and attacks. Thus, something that can’t be explained.
How’s that, we’ve gone in circles too, haven’t we? Right back at the beginning, we know nothing more about the head of Miles Lucky and Miles Lucky is back under a street light. He pulls at his hair, and shakes his head. Miles tries to remember how he got outside. He doesn’t recall and for a moment, his eyes water in frustration. However, he sucks it up, as there is no time to cry. There’s a warm room waiting for him to lock himself behind the door of. There’s an unplugged TV sitting in silence and a mannequin awaiting the news of the day.
Miles presses on and tries to calm himself down, rubbing at his left hand. With the tooth of Indi Rhyder lodged under growing skin beneath, the bandages have become a security blanket. He hasn’t changed them in a week. It’s a dangerous thing, the game he’s playing at, the sudden interest he has in trophies. In pieces of others.
Miles turns the corner and pauses, his worn out sneakers abandoned in the middle of the road. He approaches them and slips them on, grateful for something on his feet as he wanders along with his mind, stumbling across Willie Pete once again. Once again, because Miles' mind has been disgustingly filled with the man and his silence and his life. Miles can’t stop thinking about him, about how predictable he is, how easily explained.
“There we go,” Miles says as he walks, his breath visible. “Willie Pete is the rat.”
Is he talking to us? Probably. He brings it together, the point of this all. Willie Pete holds the shades of a well known experiment. He’s well documented. He’s been done again and again. There’s hundreds of him.
“It must be such a relief, Willie,” Miles says enviously, stopping to gather a stray shirt on the ground and throw it on. He’s retracing his own steps through clothing. It’ll work for now. “It must be such a relief to be you. I can’t even imagine it, I want it so bad. You wake up and you look in the mirror and you know why you are the way you. You know why you’re slightly tilted, a little strange, just a foot from being insane. Every flinch and fear, every single ounce of insecurity in your bones - you know exactly what to put it on, you know where it came from.”
Finally, he finds some pants and slips them on as quickly as possible. He feels a pressure in his head that makes him blink harshly a few times before sighing. His clothes are covered in mud. He chews at his lips and shrugs.
“Do I know? Who knows. It could be all the drugs you pump into your system that make you ridiculous and talented. It could be some bad childhood that drives you to be a champion. It could be this deep, dark emptiness inside of you that made you fall into the shadow of a woman you can’t wrap your head around.” And how does he even know about her? For all the things he doesn’t know, he’s surprised to know anything at all. His hand throbs and he looks at it, studying his fingers before diving in for a piece to chew. He speaks between the skin in his mouth.
“I don’t know, but you do and that’s enough. That would be enough for me; to know why I do the things I do. To know why I can’t stop eating my own skin. To know why eating the skin of someone else makes me happy.”
Miles finds a pair of socks and rolls his eyes, kicking off his shoes and sitting down to slip them on. It’s a warm little moment, that almost makes you forget about the dread in the air, the thick fog. The impending doom he seems to be approaching. He jumps back up to his feet and shakes his head, looking around once more to see if there’s any source to the anxiety that’s growing in him. There’s nothing, so he continues on, the way he speaks becoming more rushed.
“You end up in the middle of a town in your drawers and you know why. It’s a lucky thing and I hate you for it. I want that, I want your simple fucking head. I want your bones, I want to feel how easy it is to fall asleep in that tripped up skeleton. I want anything, Willie.
Anything at all, do you understand? Any part of you and if nothing else, that title works. I can take that, I can fill your shoes and it’ll be like you never existed at all. I can go into battle, you can be a part of me. I’ll be the Worse Horse you couldn’t be, the Stanley to your Clockwork. For all you know of yourself, it won’t matter. And what the heck. You and me. Maybe we’re both a little fucked up. Maybe we’re both creeps. Maybe we live in rooms that are too dirty and get hurt just for the sake of feeling something beyond what we do to ourselves. We’re a lot alike. But we have something that’s different between us.”
The road leads to the gas station. Miles sees it in the distance and for all the town is, he considers the establishment and the person inside a safe haven. Coffee always doesn’t sound so bad. His flannel is in the lot. He makes his way to it.
“When you die, that’ll be it. They’ve seen you before. When I die, they’ll cut open my brain just to see what crawls in the middle.”
Miles picks up the flannel and shoves his arms into the sleeves, straightening it out.
“This is your chance, Willie. I become a champion and you become part of my legacy, you become immortalized. They’ll open it up and see a piece of you inside. I can carry the both of us forever. What do you say?”
When Miles Lucky looks up, he sees himself standing there in the same clothes. Miles eyes widen. He’s terrified. He opens his mouth to say something, but the other him raises his arm. His fingers in the shape of a gun, it’s familiar. He shoots and Miles goes down. The second Miles begins to drag his body in the direction of the motel, but stops for a moment to look at us. His smile is just as uneasy as it always is.
“Happy Pigeon Day.”