Noisy when he moved.
His laptop clicked and clacked away as he swathed his fingers upon the keyboard.
He was an extension of the mainframe as far as the ambiance to be heard from the next room was concerned. His sister was fast asleep.
She was always sleeping.
The last time he had spoken to her was 3 years ago when she had awoken to make them both breakfast; smiling, speaking of how great 'last night' was.. the board games.. visiting grandparents.. ah, what a Christmas eve!
But that had been 4 years prior. When she fell asleep that night, Patter assumed her dead.
He would check on her every half-day to make sure she wasn't rotting.
And she was never, ever rotting.
She was breathing.
In his determination to remain by his sisters side, he had enveloped himself in the 2 dimensions of the computer screen to the point that reality.. the 3rd dimension.. became a surreal trip with a strange depth to it he was no longer used too. It was a trigger for panic attacks, so he would only brave the 3rd dimension in search of food, water, and coffee.
He often fell asleep at his desk.
Patter had always been a fan of travelling or at the very least the idea of travelling.. seeing it as a romantic endeavor beyond the hallow point of a single geographic locale.
He often dreamed of walking the length of the Amalfi Coast in Italy.. visiting adonis street vendors in Positano or admiring the quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento.. but the third dimension had become a frightening and surreal place for him to reside.. and besides, The Screen was always grander and more crystalline than the stuffy business of packing bags and flying from one side of the planet to another in an aluminum coffin suspended in the exalted puff of God's annulled cigarette.
It was closing in on 4 AM now. The distant star of the street light down the road peaking its way through his slightly-ajar blackout curtains caused his heart to skip a beat, so he was quick to shuffle to his feet and set the curtain right so the outside world would remain the 'outside' world.
Over the course of the last 3 years, Patter had become intensely infatuated with political geography.
Sometimes he wished he had friends or his sister would wake from her slumber simply to quiz him on world capitals so he could brazenly show what he knew.
He assumed his sister would be up for breakfast within the next 8 to 12 months, and from his online study of the cosmos he figured that wasn't too long in the big scheme of things.
In fact, it was probably .0001% to the power of 10 of a quarter of a blink on God's part.
Perhaps it was less.
Within half an hour, Patter could feel himself fading. His head began to lull forward until, eventually, he blacked into sleep, neck craned in an awkward jam.
- - -
His dreams were a strange collage of fire and brimstone.
Hellish in the most stereotypical of ways.
He saw an image of himself entering his sisters room.
Leaning forward, he takes her pulse. It's steady.
Steady.
Steady.
Stop.
Shocked, Patter leaps up, screaming manically; screaming at the wall. Screaming at the floor.
Screaming at a stock image of Satan marching through the door to laugh straight to his face.
"And that," Satan spat between chuckles, "is a show!"
Patter swung madly at Satan's nose.
His every punch threw itself through his holographic mist and the devils laughter became louder and louder and louder until tears began to stream down his cheeks and his head warped into a magnificent balloon of hateful spite and.. pop..
He was gone.
Patter collapsed to the floor. He gave himself a few moments to simply breathe.. heave.. heave..
Eventually, he clamored back to his feet and limped dejectedly over to his sisters static body.
He took her pulse in one last desperate gasp and..
Steady.
A cold chill of relief dripped through his body. She was alive.
"And that," a deep, stone voice bellows from behind him.
Patter swings himself around and sees a stock image of God gliding through the door..
"is a show."
pop
Sentence over.. the image snatches away into thin air.
"P.. Patter?"
A whisper barely distinguishable from the cold breeze wafting through the room flows from the lips of his sleeping sister.
Patter turns to her.
"Matilda?"
"P.. Patter.. you need to leave this place.."
"What do you mean?"
"You need to leave this place and brave the 3rd dimension.. follow your dreams.."
A stock sentiment.
"What dreams, Matilda? I can't leave you."
"Your dreams of travelling.. please, Patter.. I won't be up for breakfast for another 12 months. You have time.. you have time to see the world"
"There is nothing for me in the 3rd dimension but a heavy heart and death."
"Think of the sights, Patter! Think of the smells!"
"What sights? Matilda.. please.."
"The great Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco.. the influenza syringe of the Space Needle.. the wide open tundras of Siberia.. the crowded squares of Beijing.."
"Matilda.."
"The statues of Lenin crawled with ivy.. the great painted skies of St. Paul's Cathedral.. the beaches of Normandy.."
Patter ceased interrupting. He slouched himself awkwardly next to her bed and listened patiently.
"The quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento.. the smell of fresh strawberry shampoo in a French girls hair.. the soft blanket of snow atop the distant Himalaya.."
for what felt like days, Matilda continued to speak of what Patter would see.. of what Patter would taste.. of what Patter would touch.. of what Patter would smell.. and eventually..
Patter nodded awake.
- - -
His room was hollow and dark.
His eyes adjusted uncomfortably to the blackness around him and, like some psychedelic vision, depth perception invaded his sight and he tumbled his way off the floor to find his computer.
The only light was the blink of his laptop's sleep indicator.. and looking from the blinking light towards the bed he never slept in, he began to wonder how he had ended up on the floor.
Something hot and sticky clung to the soles of his feet. He clicked the space-bar and, reassured by the bright light of a booting screen, he leaned down and felt the hardwood below him.
It was his sweat.
Like a pool of blood spilled from a jab of fear, Patter uncomfortably stepped away from the mess he'd made and back into the seat at his desk.
His fingers once again began to swath themselves upon the keyboard as he tried to forget the dream he'd just had.
And then he remembered his sister.
Bolting upwards from his seat, he knocked the chair to the ground as he dove for the light-switch near the entrance to his room. It flashed on like a bolt of lightening, causing Patter to waiver a moment in shock as the door slammed itself against the wall and he dragged himself into the hallway.
Hitting the hallway light was another strike of death to the eye. He clamored again as he quite literally ripped Matilda's door from its hinges and into the wall behind him.
For some reason, things began to shake and slow as he fought an invisible current, dragging himself forwards towards his sprawled sisters body.
He was like a child, dragging his feet.
Like a child, like a child, like a child.
The current was too powerful. He collapsed forward clasping his chest on the floor.
Winded, Patter began using his arms to propel himself onward.
He staggered to make grip with the dirty mattress and once he did, he hauled himself upwards and immediately grasped his sisters wrist to check her pulse.
No pulse.
Shocked, Patter leaped up, screaming manically; screaming at the wall. Screaming at the floor.
Screaming at the..
there is a note crunched within her pale, dead fingers.
A rancid odor wafts through the room and Patter knows now she is rotting.
He pries at her stiff tenure and unfolds the crunched paper.
P.O. Box 222
an ode to hampered indifference
in the wind of a slight canyon
the water of a displaced ocean lost at land finds promise
as wax during a power-outage
and light empty in no sun-up or sun-down
winds itself onward into cavernous evil.
fools of the America
fools are a prince.
fools of the Europe
fools are a prince.
and why ask if in asking one receives?
had you asked in time for the last supper
you may have afforded a bite
as Christ and Peter ate you whole.
fools of the Australia
fools are a prince.
fools of the Asia
fools are a prince.
Patter began to shiver of fear and confusion as he read the small post-script his sister had written at the very bottom of the page.
The quaint picturesque of tiny Roman scooters parked on the sweet cobbled beige of Sorrento
dream of a certain
pitter-Patter.
He looked to his sister once more and began to weep uncontrollably. He sunk to the ground beside her bed.. until eventually..
Patter nodded awake.
- - -
Patter's neck cracked as he jaunted into consciousness at his desk. Before he could help it, his chair fell backwards and his head bounced violently off the floor.
Writhing in pain and retreating into the fetal position, Patter regained his sense of space and time and hoisted himself slowly back to his feet, still gently caressing the back of his head as if to massage it into the shape of a skull.
All of a sudden, a primal rage began to pulse through his caffeine-constricted veins unsure of whether or not he was simply dreaming away and awake and in his anger, swinging his fists in the air as if still to punch the holographic mist of the laughing stock devil and, before he realized exactly what he was doing, his knuckles drove straight into the glassy gaze of his computer screen.
The laptop LED began to bleed a bruised purple as the glass shattered in a fantastic array of electric blue and the computer itself jerked backwards, flipping itself to the ground as if Patter had broken a human spine.
Patter heaved 3 anguished sighs.
3.5.
3.5.
At that moment he knew it was time to leave the crystalline perfection of The Screen behind.
- - -
Heart racing and head aching, Patter stammered slowly down the one-way street beyond his home.
Everything was glowing with a conceited realism he couldn't digest.
The star of the streetlight at the end of his road became brighter and brighter and brighter until suddenly, as he got close enough, it's light began to fade into oncoming darkness and through the threatening pink of the dawn sky, he understood the star had been dead for as long as he had lived and all he had ever really seen was the light of an older generation.
A light under which his father may have kissed his first love, or his grandmother may have walked past as she strolled with a teenage grandfather, coyly dispersing herself into nervous giggles as grandpa made obvious reference to copulation in his suave 30's accent.
The light he had fearfully observed as a beacon of 3rd dimensional existence was not his existence and in the approaching chill of predawn, Patter recited the lines.. "in the wind of a slight canyon, the water of a displaced ocean lost at land, finds promise as wax during a power-outage, and light empty in no sun-up or sun-down, winds itself onward into cavernous evil."
and then he whispered to the quickening breeze, hoping the words would laxly drift their way home..
"Matilda."
As his steps progressed like a piano concerto deeper and deeper into the light-bulb of the unknown, the street began to fade into decay and disrepair until eventually, it was nothing but a cracked desert below his feet.
It wasn't a burn, or a freeze.. just a warm chill that worked its way through his sleeves.
He stopped for a moment to gaze backwards towards home, and laughed insanity when he saw that, not only did the street disappear, but his home no longer seemed to exist.
It was simply nowhere.
He stopped laughing abruptly, like a *STOP* placed in the middle of a long run-on sentence, and all that surrounded him was a moving silence and winded dust.
Blissfully obtuse.
The horizon was freezing in the distance. His perception screamed in fear with every single step, but he managed to cuddle the anxiety like an accident child he was obliged to love.
Wiping the sweat from the palms of his hands like discarded bleeding, he rummaged through his small black backpack and pulled out an old, broken Samsung pay-and-talk he had received for his 13th birthday. The delicate wiggle of broken prose and scratched screen sunk into the further deserted backdrop beyond.
Redundantly he pressed and held his finger on the 'end' key for several seconds, expecting what he knew would not occur.
When the phone refused the jolt to attention, he grappled through his pocket for something to write with. There was a bobby-pin floating in the mist of lint at the bottom of his bag. Gently grasping it by the sharp end, he slowly and surgically moved it into the light. Looking to his scratched screen, he began to chip away at it.
"I can't forget. I can't forget. I can't forget."
Like the morning mantra of a Buddhist sage, he chanted as he carved his words into the phone like a new-age Stonehenge notebook.
P
O
BOX
2 2 2
Whatever significance. Whatever it wanted.
As his steps progressed like a piano concerto deeper and deeper into the light-bulb of the unknown, the street began to fade into decay and disrepair until eventually, it was nothing but a cracked desert below his feet.
It wasn't a burn, or a freeze.. just a warm chill that worked its way through his sleeves.
He stopped for a moment to gaze backwards towards home, and laughed insanity when he saw that, not only did the street disappear, but his home no longer seemed to exist.
It was simply nowhere.
He stopped laughing abruptly, like a *STOP* placed in the middle of a long run-on sentence, and all that surrounded him was a moving silence and winded dust.
Blissfully obtuse.
The horizon was freezing in the distance. His perception screamed in fear with every single step, but he managed to cuddle the anxiety like an accident child he was obliged to love.
Wiping the sweat from the palms of his hands like discarded bleeding, he rummaged through his small black backpack and pulled out an old, broken Samsung pay-and-talk he had received for his 13th birthday. The delicate wiggle of broken prose and scratched screen sunk into the further deserted backdrop beyond.
Redundantly he pressed and held his finger on the 'end' key for several seconds, expecting what he knew would not occur.
When the phone refused the jolt to attention, he grappled through his pocket for something to write with. There was a bobby-pin floating in the mist of lint at the bottom of his bag. Gently grasping it by the sharp end, he slowly and surgically moved it into the light. Looking to his scratched screen, he began to chip away at it.
"I can't forget. I can't forget. I can't forget."
Like the morning mantra of a Buddhist sage, he chanted as he carved his words into the phone like a new-age Stonehenge notebook.
P
O
BOX
2 2 2
Whatever significance. Whatever it wanted.
