Nasty Conjugation

Hello babies. I started writing this last week, but today I finally put in the gumption to finish it up. I hope you like it because I do. Do you hear that, world? I am allowing myself to approve of something that I have written. Don’t think I’m going to get into the habit or anything. Just note that today, just this once, I am pretty okay with one of my stories.

It’s a(nother) story about feelings.

DEAL WITH IT.

She’s always had a lot of feelings, strong feelings, often pouncing upon her unexpectedly. Things were always setting her off – a memory, a song, kind or unkind words. Sometimes they swelled up so powerfully that she felt as if she might burst. The thing is, today she did.

She burst!

It happened without warning, at a coffee shop, around ten in the morning. She was sipping Earl Grey from a chipped mug, letting her mind drift. She thought about breakfast, about maybe visiting her family this weekend, about caterpillars and fossil fuels and types of doilies. Her tea was about half-finished when she settled to thinking about a boy, a complex friendship that was cooling with time. She scolded herself for not calling him more often. She thought about a weekend two summers past, felt a flutter of emotion in her chest and dwelt on that for a while.

As she was dwelling a song came on in the café. Staring off into the middle distance, she barely heard it at first. It wasn’t until the song’s chorus that she broke from her reminiscence. She recognized it from somewhere – some movie, maybe a John Hughes movie, a pop ballad full of youthful hope and dancing with your arms up in the air. The song mixed with her mood, poignant summers mingling with the Breakfast Club, and a chain reaction began in her head. Emotions spawned, split, spun violently and exploded. She felt expansive, like she was seeping into, absorbing the small table, the Honda driving by outside, the sky, the song. She caught the reflection of her eye, small and gleaming in the window, and then she burst.

She burst!

The glass windows exploded outwards; the people smoking cigarettes outside all dove for cover. There she sat, one hand on her mug, as all those feelings surged forth from her head. People in the shop at the time swore they saw a glowing nova around her, streaks of light flying out in every direction. The café’s owner said she looked like, “a goddamn Roman candle.”

As for her feelings, they soared and danced in the sky over the shop. Some shot down the road, racing, becoming great fiery beasts that overturned cars in their mad dash. Some grew wings and swept past a playground of kindergarteners, diving and spiraling in tight formations to squealing applause. Some sat quietly in the coffee shop, hunched over someone else’s drink at an abandoned table. Some, in their excitement, flew all the way into space and disappeared from this story.

The first the police heard of it was a woman on her cell phone, calling to report that, “merciful Jesus, the Rapture’s upon us!” They sent a squad car to investigate, which was later found in a tree three miles outside of town. Another officer was sent to the elementary school to check out reports of unusual flying creatures in the playground, but he didn’t immediately find anything out of the ordinary. A little boy tugged at the officer’s sleeve and pointed towards one corner of the playground.

“They landed over there,” he said.

Blue sunflowers erupted from the sandbox and grew until they stood ten feet high. The officer and the boy stood there in the still summer morning and watched them sway back and forth in unison.

More calls flooded in about otherworldly happenings around town: a bear in the grocery store, sitting in a pile of lettuces and tomatoes, crying; a giant, ghostly piano hovering over the bus station; clouds taking rude shapes and floating past the retirement home. By afternoon the police chief was on the phone begging the governor to declare a state of emergency.

The riot team was dispatched to the café where she still sat frozen in place as feelings gushed forth from her head. The police formed a line across the street, ducking behind their open car doors as bolts of light streaked past. Their crisis mediator tried to reason with her, but ended up creating another problem. As his words emerged from the megaphone they took shape and grew, piling and tangling around the coffee shop until they cocooned the building like razor wire. Words like, “misunderstanding,” and, “professional help,” gleamed threateningly in the afternoon sun. The mediator was sent home for the day.

By now her feelings had reached the very edges of town. State University was shut down for the rest of the day when a shadowy creature appeared, fifty feet tall, and began to pace back and forth across the Union Green. Despite its great size, no one could agree on what it looked like – one young man thought it looked like Jim Morrison, while a whole sorority house swore it was, “kind of like my ex-boyfriend.” The Dean of English said it just looked sad.

Seven people met their evil twins that day. Twelve people met their good twins. The Old Courthouse spontaneously caught fire, but before the ladder trucks could arrive a miniature hurricane swirled into life and put it out. One particularly unlucky man was set upon by a screeching, demonic octopus while he sat on the toilet in his home. Thick, disembodied eyebrows fluttered all around town like bushy butterflies.

Her feelings ran amok for the rest of the day. Some were nice enough, but others didn’t quite know how to behave in public. A few were downright awful. Some of them took on familiar shapes like horses and violins. A lot of them were weird, about a third of them were blue, and many of them fit the general theme of animals-with-feelings. None of them killed anyone, though there were a lot of minor traffic accidents and a few extreme anxiety attacks.

A lot of people got religion that day, though maybe just as many lost it. For the next few weeks psychiatrists would experience a record number of new patients. News agencies didn’t know what to make of it. Some early reports called it a terrorist attack, though by the end of the day most stations had stopped trying to explain it and were just trying to chase down the best stories. One national news organization would later launch an investigation into the possibility of hallucinogens in the town water supply. Throughout the day the mayor issued instructions for everyone to remain calm and not attempt to interact with the apparitions. The governor never called a state of emergency, but the police chief would resign the next day.

But all of the feelings, no matter how mean or whimsical or on-fire they were, stopped what they were doing at exactly four-fifteen in the afternoon. With one mind they turned back towards the café and ran, flew, jumped, swam, galloped, and scampered, forming a tangled ball of emotions that arced through the sky like an enormous fly ball. It left tiny lightning bolts in its wake.

The feelings soared through the broken coffee shop window and slammed into her at high speed. Her head snapped back a little, like someone falling asleep at a school desk, and electricity danced down the legs of her chair. At last, silence settled over the city. She took a sip of her tea and made a little face. It was cold.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Short Stories, Short shorts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.