serials
It’s scary. I don’t know why he tells me these things. I don’t know why he’s a ghost hologram or why he appears or how he knows so much. I don’t know how Mr. Smiles is real. But I listen because – what does he say? “We’re getting results.” I listen because I like getting results. I feel strong and smart when we’re together. So I obey, but I obey with a strainer, not with a sand bucket. Sometimes Mr. Smiles disappears for days and days and it scares me. My mind wanders. I get lonely when he isn’t around. There are some nights, long blue windy ones where the moon winks out like a street lamp and everything is faded and dirty and hollow, and that’s when I think about Audrey. I wonder where she is, if she still lives in that house or if she’s gone away to some wonderful new town where people do things and make things happen like magic. In other places, places not like this one, an idea can come alive like Pinocchio and walk the floors and tap dance and be your son. I wonder if she’s somewhere like that. Other times I hope she’s still there, I hope I can find her when I get out. I hope she still has her daisy ring. I hope she remembers me, even though it was stupid to get married, silly kid stuff. I know that, but I still feel different when I think about it. I feel like I’m not like the other kids that say girls are gross or icky or cooties or any of that. The Other Voice says, “Great Expectations. Pip knew that feelings that were thought to be quite reasonable in a man were somehow quite humorous in a boy.” I know Audrey is a special thing, like the twilight howl of a free wolf on the hilltop or the falling star that makes fire in the sky like a bullet of paint. I know she is magic, like those places where anything can happen. Nights like that I take out the ring she gave me, hidden inside my shoe like you hear people doing in the old war POW camp stories. I put that ring on and pretend she’s my wife and we’re big, and she’s just not here right now because she had to go away to a magic town and make music or dance or show a painting or talk about a book or something like that. And I’m home with the dogs and watering the plants. Just waiting for her. On those really long blue nights when the hours are like the wild long of a river, that’s what I think about.
Then I fall asleep. 80