The Blog of Lizzy and Derek

I stroll the supermarket

evenings, friday, usually

sometimes, I see carrots.

Today I did not see carrots.

Yellow-orange starch sticks that sprouted from the ground.

They were not present.

And it bothered me so.

For my stew required carrots.

And my stew, so meticulously planned, was my sole reducer of hunger.

Now, without carrots, those precious carrots

I would starve.

I rationalized:

perhaps there was an earthquake and all my beautiful carrots fell into some abyssal crack in the earth's titanic crust, melting in the ferocious lava that awaited them

perhaps an alien race, with empty souls and emptier stomachs, decided to abduct all my glorious carrots to conduct some foreign extraterrestrial study

perhaps it was the 1%

perhaps a fire -- the wildest of fires! -- spread across the land; all the bountiful carrots of the many fields perished

perhaps perhaps perhaps the carrots were tainted by the magic of a wayward witch, grew legs, and migrated to shore!

The final option seemed the most sensible and I tried to recall whether or not I had purchased a swimsuit.

Then it hit me!

I looked around me and noticed

Elizabeth Rainer, it was always her.  During my five in the morning commute to the corporation.  After the rainstorm, when the lowly, matutinal worms migrated from their subterranean homes, upwards to minuscule cracks in the unpaved concrete base.  Proceeding any night of extraneous affairs.  Her name alone filled all my earthly sensations — leaving me void of intangible fulfillment.  Such a body she possessed, curved to flawless angle so that with every step her appearance altered.  Those pupils — encased in sombre, raven irises — were tainted with reflections of her vision.  Her shiny, voluptuous violet lips contrasted against her bronzed brown skin.  Every ebony follicle of hers refracted the sunlight although none was present.

Returning home, I was that Saturday.  From Manhattan to Menlo, the subway presented itself a superior option — weather never bothered, tremors but illusory sensations.  Although three cars (a Lexus, a Prius, a Tesla) were under my possession, I often found public transportation more efficient.  After all, on the third seat to the right on Subway 49, sat Elizabeth Rainer.

Often, my admiration of her was parallel to a hungry, homeless traveler gazing upon a transient glimmer in the nebulous yonder.  Her hands, they swayed with every syllable spoken in causerie to on-goers.  Her fragile fingers swirled around the ends of her Winehousean updo.  She always styled it as a single bun.  Always a leather coat.  And never once did I witness a phone call, an iPod, a pager — the bottom of her glossy heels (a brief glimpse of which I caught) were etched with a “Free Trade” signature.  And every day she exited the Subway to stop at Station 7; the silhouette of her backside slowly melted into my retinas.  Joyous agony.  Elizabeth, Elizabeth Rainer.

This had been the pattern five months: my peripherals bring me excitement, she converses with passengers, she leaves, I leave shortly afterwards, I think of her at work, I return to Subway 49, she gets on, my admiration murders me, I leave, strangled by my strange timidity.  The countless moments I envisioned her slim, sensuous body equaled the countless moments I receded into my nervous demeanor.  Never did I speak (and everyday I attempted, my voice further diminished).  Yet, never did it matter: her movements were words and her body an accent.  Regardless, temptations to attempt speaking to her I could not resist.

July the seventh, I told my self, is the day today.  But!  It is not an ordinary day!  Today, I shall muster the courage to speak to her!  I was filled with herculean determination.  The morning rain, though slightly delaying my ride to the subway, did not faze me.  It was 5:01 by the time I got on and Elizabeth Rainer would enter the subway in 23 minutes exactly.  I examined the other passengers: they constantly changed yet all served the same purpose.  I examined my emails, texts: they neither changed, always the same purpose.  Perhaps I, too, remained a constant and unchanging fool, who served the numbingly same, formulaic purpose.  A lonesome ride it always, at least before Elizabeth Rainer.  Elizabeth Rainer never changed.  I would never want such.

The millennia of waiting seemed a second the very instant Elizabeth Rainer sprinted in with her burgundy umbrella.  I was sitting to the second seat on the right.  Always, to the third she would sit, and that day was no different.  As she sat down, I gradually perspired, biting my tongue.  The more and more time that passed, the more and more I thought of her, regretting my foolish move.  She began a conversation with an senile lady — a demon of jealousy bubbled within me.  I cooled down the moment I realized such passive envy did not catalyze my connection with Rainer.

After ten minutes, I ceased to think in words.  Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Rainer, Rainer....  The moment I snapped from my enamored stupor, I managed to say:

“Hi.”

A line, five or so people, stood in front of the counter, in search of panacea, err, pills. The first fool walked forward to the nurse; she took his soul, err, temperature, and entrusted him with 500 milliliters of pharmacological ambrosia. Entrusted a misnomer here: she merely gave them to him, with no expressed sense of trust or camaraderie between them, no warrantee or guarantee regarding the swallowing of the small tablets. The nurse weighed him, and I worried the poor sap would break the scale. His total weight was a staggering seven-hundred pounds (give or take nine pounds) and I could deduce such from the flabbergasted face of the psychiatric assistant. Assistant is also a misnomer here: she was seeking to sabotage each and every one of us, seeking to sabotage me, and I knew I could not trust her for she could not entrust me with narcotics.

I cringed at the sight of the second fool’s journey, but it was a "necessary journey" I’m sure he rationalized (he did not seem scared, which worried me more). Had this mistreatment become common to them? I did not want to speak to any of them and I did not want to bother personnel with such a trivial question, but I knew it wasn’t truly trivial and I knew I could not speak to them even if I wanted to. His procedure was no different from his predecessor’s and the third fool to follow experienced the same. The fourth. The fifth. I was left.

The only fool left in the chaotic, medically-necessary line was I. I disliked such and walked forward at shortened pace, procrastinating the pain, perhaps prolonging it. I longed for professional treatment unlike this, this unprofessional psychiatric punishment — to wait in a line, a long line, the longest line with a drove of idiots, awaiting pills that would serve no use and tests that serve no use! But my struggle, too, was of no use, and I knew they’d resort to coercion if I resisted. So I walked forward to the nurse, a foul wench with a hairy mole and manufactured smile and hairy, manufactured breasts. Not even the second fool’s journey had made me cringe so greatly.

She handed me the duo of blue, ovular pharmaceuticals; I swallowed them (with great distaste). Two blue pills swimming through esophageal streets, winding down to Stomach Cul-de-sac where they would settle into high-end suburban homes and begin their monochrome family lives. I wished them a safe trip, the safest trip, which is strange, since tripping often involves the opposite of safety and I feared that I was wishing them an oxymoron. Cardboard, I believe, was the taste of these pills, although one may also describe them as having a concrete-like texture: rough, basic like soap. The effect of these was supposedly injecting serotonin into my neural streams, which made little sense to me since they entered through the stomach — then again, I never understood science and it would be foolish to ever attempt understanding. I supposed, then, their suburban homes were merely temporary until they ventured to the Villi Village and then Neurotropolis, where perhaps they would achieve their ultimate goal.

She lodged her thermometer in my ear canal; the strange device clicked and a number appeared on the display: 98.5 fahrenheit; she ignored the number, as if it gave no indication of my great sickness, treating it as an insignificant anomaly. I was an insignificant anomaly. She then asked me to stand on a scale. I complied.

Time subsided, wilted, wilted into the nothingness I so disparagingly attempted to avoid, avoid at all costs. But regardless the costs, I have brought about this terror. Oh, Lord; oh, Buddha; oh, Allah; oh, Kelly Clarkson and Satan please shield me from the monstrosity I have published, or rather, am about to publish, but since time no longer exists I published and have published and unpublished and am unpublishing this piece. Please spare my soul for the multiple cosmic sins I (have committed) am about to commit! Please spare my humble human soul for the timeless and lawless technological torture I am to inflict (have inflicted) upon society! Please spare (if you have not already) my soul! And no, my transient dear, this is not a rift in time, a minor hole which can be sealed through stitches or superglue. This is the dissolution, the dissolution of time, the dissolution of reality.

This is the first post of a blog primarily soon-to-be abandoned, a blog far too obscure for the hazy-minded masses, a blog far too reckless and wrecked to be salvaged by the cybernetic hands of its creators, a blog far too far away from reality (so far even Dali begins to make sense...), a blog far too deranged, twisted, distorted, and tortured to conform in this captivity!

But this is a blog: it is chained to the will of its owners and its owners will not its freedom.