Midstream

Grape vines and gray skies and yellow dafidils and blue tulips all hang arranged by chance around a hickory fence. The posts are dirty and chipped the way wood becomes when it rots in the sun un-finished after years have had their way with it. An oddly shaped house, much like the back of a house, only with windows that looked like great oval eyes staring down the street and staring down the children gave you the impression it was indeed the front.The door was coloured like ivory, off gray and too dull for anyone to knock on. Behind the door was a living room, no one lived in it, but sometimes conversations lingered long after company left; the wood smoked faintly as the embers were drifting to sleep. The couche cushions held memories too darling to ever let go of. Lint and loose change kept these secrets to themselves, and swore never to tell. Besides, how often do you probe for change under the cushion. Unless you're in a bind.Jay was a quiet silent dreamy type of kid, when the rage wasn't pouring from his finger tips onto a fretboard of an old acoustic guitar, they were spelling words out on an antique desk top; each firm stroke of any given key on the type-writer would spell out places or things he dreamt of seeing or doing. And once in a lonesome while, they would spell out things he dreamt of being."F" he tapped, beginning his first career choice. Probably just a fire-fighter. He had often dreamt about rushing into a building- abandoned and burning and by chance stumbling upon some unconscious victim. "Miss, can you hear me? Miss, listen to my voice. I'm going to get you out" he'd scream in between gasps for air under thick dark smoke. Rosey and ripe as oak smells just fine when its burning."Ar.." he seemingly began to ask. What was he asking? To whom was he asking. The woman in the building? Jay didn't know, and he tried scribbling out lines onto a piece of scrap paper. Are you alright? No, that didn't seem heroic at all now.Arielle, can you hear me? But how did he know her name, he thought in spells. He crumbled the paper and walked to the window, the big oval eyed window and he peered onto the streets. Not a drip of inspiration perspired from a blue sky and dusty cracked concrete streets, and inside he felt tarnished. Tarnished like his car just melting in the sun, or so it appeared to him.Black birds flew in the distance and he thought, ::i'm never doing anything with my time. I bide my time to sit and wonder and take life in stride and accept the way things are going, as the way they have to be. But i'm not sure they really have to be this way. Sometimes words mean the same thing like cause and 'cause::His thoughts began to race, as they did from time to time. About now was the time he would check his pulse, as he felt his heart beat in rhythms that would make a percussionist dizzy.::I feel a pain in my leg, a pain in my head. Maybe its a blood clot. I don't think it could be a blood clot. But do you even know what one is? Well, maybe i shouldn't smoke so much.::Anxiety began to tackle him until his pale yellow walls turned red, and everything had the same aura around it; screaming stay away, stay fa"r away" when i grow.After fumbling for his phone, he called the man whose last name was mystery, and first name was Real. Real mystery was just that, and Jay didn't ask questions. He didn't care, and besides, how much do you need to know about the person selling you drugs.'I need 5 Lorazepams" Jay sounded frantic over the phone. Static from satellites distorted shakiness for panting, and he began panting in real time."10 tokens," was the real replay.Jay reached in his pocket, to find 7 dollars. He looked under his bed and found a 2 dollar bill. He walked down the stairs and they creaked, "Nt" "eee" "nuff"He made it to the living room and realized he didn't have enough. He checked the kitchen counter, hoping someone had left spare change. He found 3 pennies, and took his chances somewhere else.He looked at the couch, and tried to think hard about what the couches meant to him. They looked familiar, but he couldn't remember sitting on them. He couldn't remember anything really, except that he needed another dollar.::Look under the couch, okay, i feel something.::He found a dollar and 37 cents. five quarters, a dime and two pennies. They clanked together as he dropped them in his coat's cigarette pocket. Jay didn't know it, but.:: I'm going to quit smoking.::And it was decided, he would quit smoking cigarettes. Things went like this quite often, sometimes his thoughts ran so wildly that it appeared they were on track to just eat his mind inside out. To have to subconscious attack the conscious is a grave battle. Sometimes lithium and other salts and medications could cure this. But sometimes, there's always room for sometimes.