Finger Exercise #3 - The Boy Who Never Left His Bed

The Boy Who Never Left His Bed

The steep view from the 19th floor break-room window was a visual buffet for the curious and voyeuristic. Workers with blank faces and monitor glazed stares, diverse motivational posters, lights on, lights off, soft lights, cubicle interior decorators creatively snazzing up their economical trappings. Two floors below and on the opposite side of the air shaft, seen in several windows, is a collection of hospital beds, some neatly preserved and unattended except for one in the corner. In this bed, lying on it's back, with a head obscured by the vantage point and with arms outside of a blanket, is what looks to be the sleeping form of a teenager. A hospital bracelet on the right wrist, sheets tucked-in outlining a slim torso which slopes into a valley of legs, only to be upraised again by feet at the bottom snugly fastened by the sheet. Day after day the man on the 19th floor would approach the window and gravely look down at the boy in the corner. Was this an infirmary where no one else ever got sick or ever used the other beds? He was sure he had never seen anyone else in any of the other beds. He knew there was a private high school in the building - was this a school nurses office, where each day this poor boy comes to school and gets into a bed and stays there all day? Was this a quarantined hospice which was only dealing with sick and infectious children, a place where they could safely relax and nap their way into heaven? What was wrong with this child? The most intriguing aspect of this situation was that the child was always lying in the same position, never moving. During his coffee-break the man looked down, the boy was still face up, lunch, face up, the fading light of an early winter night, face up...never moving, the hospital bracelet and hand always laying motionless at his side. The situation had to be dire.

Seeing the motionless boy day after day started to affect the man’s heart, weighing heavy on it like an heirloom cameo locket in a velvet bag, shoved away in a bottom drawer. He began to be nicer to people, he was sweeter to his wife and co-workers, he had a relish for his unremarkable commute and started to smile and offer his seat. Thinking about the boy in the bed who would not move, could not move, turned a light on in the man’s heart. He knew what it was like to sit at the bedside of an ailing child, watching something commit to movements alien to it’s design, or worse sit in a languid state adopting the pallor of illness. Children are supposed to run, laugh, scamper, look you straight into the eye, absorb lessons on how to behave and misbehave, the little ones are hungry for guidance, earnest with love, and their youthful innocence affords them whiteboard anger that can always be easily wiped away. He remembered this and his heart was rent by the touching spectacle of the child who knew nothing else than the frosted mini wheat texture of the ceiling tiles over his sickbed. The teenager was comatose, close to death, trapped in a New York City high-rise, and the most offensive and puzzling element of the whole heartbreaking situation was not one person ever came to check on this boy. The man never saw a nurse approach the bedside, no family members bringing stuffed animals or flowers, no vitals were ever checked, no magazines were given out, no hint of the blue-glare of a TV in the corner. What kind of care was this child being given? Possibly the only care you can give to someone who is this close to the threshold of mortality. The man stared at the teenager, day after day his thoughts crowded by the silent entreaties from the suffering boy in the bed, urging him to live his life to the fullest and be thankful for everyday he spent above ground.

Weeks later, during a fire training in which they learned how to escape the building, the man’s thoughts flew to the boy in the bed. In the event of an emergency, who would help the sick boy? How could they move him? Would it be worth it? It was then that the building manager referenced the building’s many occupants, various business offices and companies, one of which was a nursing school on the 17th floor. The poor infected near death teenager who had inspired the man to become a better person was a mannequin.

Finger Exercise - #4 - No More Sugar

NO MORE SUGAR

The early morning sunlight flashed a golden amber as it caught the descending ribbons of maple syrup. The sauce fell in drizzling ropes, first onto a perfectly square pat of creamy butter, and then, unable to contain it’s morass of molasse, it slowly dripped off the sides of the immaculately browned and fluffy stack of pillow-soft pancakes. And with one final squeeze, city councilman Glenn Headwidth had knowingly, and shamefully, dispensed the last drop of sugar in the whole city of Lakeburg onto his breakfast.

There was no more sugar in Lakeburg. What had originally appeared to be a small hiccup in the computers had turned into a riot inducing hellscape; where sugar was like meth, and every citizen of Lakeburg, a methhead. Teenagers, whose storied apathy had been the clarion call to couches for decades, now sprung into militant and frightfully organized action. Single mothers, who had relied on confectionary induced comas to free their afternoons, became baggy-eyed warriors, fighting to replace the saccharine laced sanctity of peaceful, although chemically altered, sleeping children. Systems of bribery and cajolement, utilized by parents and nannies relying on an endless supply of sugar to work as tender, crumbled and what took over was nothing short of anarchic entropy with a slight inclination for the formation of mobs, usually of the lynching variety. Bands of concerned and cracked-out neighbors gathered together, roaming the streets, armed with weed whackers and garden shovels, hunting for any trace elements of the sweetness that once flowed like fountain drinks.

Daytime news anchors began trolling the conflagrated neighborhoods, looking for truly newsworthy distress. In some cases, the tv personalities were using stray packets of Splenda to illicit information they hoped would make for historic news coverage. Several people, convinced of the futility of a continued life without the considerations of a cassonade, immolated themselves in front of the Little Debbie distribution center on Front St. A heap of burning corpses smoldered upon the driveway, blocking access to the center. The continued production of all those cakes and cookies would be in jeopardy without workers, but manpower wasn’t the missing ingredient; what was needed was sugar, something that no one had in Lakeburg. At least, no one was outwardly advertising that they had sugar.

As city councilman Glenn Headwidth ate the final bite of his breakfast with satisfaction, he heard a thunderous pounding at his door. As he approached, he heard the unmistakable and agitated sounds of an angered crowd. Open handed and forceful, the people slammed the councilman’s door, concerned with the local governmental response to this problem. Or the lack thereof. Wondering if answering the door was the right decision, Glenn hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. If he didn’t answer the door, they might think he was not inside. They might move on. He waited as the crowd’s anger slowly rose in intensity. There were shouts outside,

“I can smell it! It smells like pancakes god damnit!”

As the crowd realized that syrup was a key aspect to pancake enjoyment, and syrup was mostly sugar, the noise and anger surged mightily. He backed away from the door and stared at his entryway, open mouthed and stupid. His hands searched his robe absentmindedly; half like he was looking for his car keys, and half proprioceptively reminding himself that yes, he was inside of his body and yes, this was real life. Glenn put his hand on his face and was terrified to find little chunks of syrup and tasty crumbs of pancake stuck to his stupid mouth. He quickly wiped off the incriminating crust and started to form a plan inside of his head. Remembering that his cool rationale, even-handed ability to control crowds, and well-versed persona had seen him through 4 non-contested re-elections, Councilman Headwidth bravely resolved to open the door.


As his hand gripped the doorknob, 613 buckshot splintered their way through his door and viciously embedded themselves throughout his face and torso, effectively ending both his life and his questions about what kind of reception he would receive from the angry mob. With the door jamb blown away, the mob entered Councilman Headwidth’s house, to find the robed official in a bloodsoaked heap of terrycloth, gun smoke and sinew.

Walking slowly towards the body, as if not to wake it up, an elderly member of the mob leaned over and in frustration, addressed the man with the shotgun.

“Well for God sake’s Travis, you shot the alderman!” He drawled, poking at the heap.

“And just how in the hell was I supposed to know he would be directly on the other side of the door? He musta heard us coming." Travis quipped back, shouldering his gun.

He stood, perhaps not as proud as a big game hunter, but as a man who had used his firearm for it’s ultimate purpose, and that, was something. He continued,

“He shouldn't even be here! He should be doing whatever it is that he usually does! His ass should be in Town Hall, or checking drill sites for permits, or...hell I don’t know. He should definitely not be sneaking around his own damned house!"

An investigative branch of the mob had detached and began rummaging through the recently deceased’s kitchen cupboards. There were the sounds of frantic searching followed by loud curses. One of the investigators had found something. The kitchen door swung open and in the hand of a waifish old lady, who was diabetic and had no active need for sugar like the rest and was just along for the ride, was the empty squeeze bottle of Aunt Jemima.

“Councilman Headwidth was holding!” She yelled, clutching the empty bottle with punctuation.

“He deserved what he got.” Travis said with finality. “In a bigger sense.”
 
Travis’s self-affirmation and absolvement from shooting an unarmed man for eating pancakes seemed almost right. But a lot of things “seemed” on that day.