Elo kiddies

It seems I've started a blog and run out of things to write about almost immediately. My apologies. Hopefully more will follow soon. For now, here's a project I've already had and posted on Facebook awhile back, if anyone cares and actually reads this thing. They were interesting to write, maybe someone will find them interesting to read.

"Bad Horsie"

The siren sounds. The rhythmic cadence grinds to a start like an engine in desperate need of maintenance, like

thunder that’s having a particularly bad day. Something bad is about to happen, but it sure is taking its sweet ass god damn time.

"Press Play"

The suit hangs on the wall, a futuristic disco party in and of itself. No one is fit to wear it, least of all he who owns it. There are important happenings afoot, but no one cares—the suit is the center of attention. Cocktails float about the room, but no one claims them.

"Slow Motion"

The alley is empty, almost peaceful. In years past, there was a house at the end, but history had rubbed out its existence, reducing it to weeds and, inexplicably, old tires. The moon hangs in the sky like an overdone cliché, but even ugly things look beautiful by moonlight.

"Dark Prince"

FADE IN

CUT TO: An overhead shot of a car chase on a crowded freeway. A black Mercedes weaves in and out of traffic while police scramble to close in from all directions, and other drivers scramble to get out of the way.

CUT TO: Inside shot of a police car. The officer in the driver’s seat looks despondent.

AUDIO FADE IN: Rising applause.

CUT TO: Close up of the officer’s face. Slow grin.

CUT TO: Police car swerving out of traffic, off a bridge into the water.

AUDIO CUE: Applause up and out.

FADE OUT

“The Instrumental”

Boats have dreams too, you know. Dreams of seagulls and fish and pirates and other suitably boat-y things, but the really fantastic dreams are those about the other world. The catamaran dreams nightly of business lunches and mornings in church. The speedboat takes somnambulant journeys to shopping malls and grocery stores, carefully filling carts with loose-fitting jeans and canned vegetables. The stately yacht’s nocturnal meanderings frequently find him ambling into a shop on Manhattan Boulevard to be fitted for a very fine suit. The rowboat dreams of one day saving the world.

“Better Much Better”

His head was fucked, he couldn’t see straight, and conversation was like one of those rigged amusement-park games that you can’t win, but for some reason he kept trying. Please stop the carnival, I’d like to get off. Now he was looking for a way out of this state of mind, a ticket to sobriety to get him through the night. He’d really been worked over. He drank the water, shrugged it all off again, and started from the top. His head was fucked…

“ATM Drugstore”

Little kids know where it’s at. You can spend whole afternoons on nothing, pretending to be parents or pirates or parrots or patients. You can spend hours with your guys and dolls, inventing stories that are never written but are still concrete and absolute. You can say, without a trace of irony that you want to be a cowboy when you grow up. Hell, you can even say you want to be the horse.

“El Cangrejo”

The bag was taunting him. His gloves were like hammers, like lightning, like hammers of lightning. He swore, one of these days he’d beat that sonofabitch.

“Oscar Wilde”

He closes his eyes, fighting against his own lungs for air. All his life, he’d tried to have it all, living only in the moment, never truly accomplishing anything, yet treating the whole world as his oyster. And he’d hated it. So he’d changed. He’d accomplished much in the last ten years, striving to further not only his own life, but the lives of those around him. But still, he’d learned to hate it. So there he was, eyes tight, struggling to breathe against the realization that contentment was no more real than unicorns and happiness as substantial as the sunlight that occasionally carried it, and he hated it, and he hated it, and he hated it.

We are all our own devil.