Sunday, January 03, 2010
The NERVOUS STOMACH Series: Ego-Strategy 36 – Vision
Current mood: chill
Category: Life
Okay, I’m fourteen and thinking that this ‘masturbation-will-make-you-go-blind’ thing might be the reason I have to wear the proverbial coke-bottle glasses now. But wearing glasses, I decide, isn’t too high a price.
I’ve been a mystery, comic book, and TV fan since I was like two, which means I love Nancy Drew and Captain Archer and Superman and Wonder Woman and all the other icons who put their lives on the line for truth, justice, and the American way. Since it’s snowing like crazy outside and the rest of my family is trapped at my Aunt Celina’s (I faked a stomach ache so I could stay home) I decide to spend the day making up my own hero, somebody who can really cut it in a new decade.
I start typing, burning through the page after page on my computer screen until it’s late afternoon. A dark hero develops, a teenage boy whose superpower is so dorky, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to do with his life. His skill? The kid can make bad smells good.
I’m just launching into the big caper where he’s fighting his town’s most hated supervillan, Gas-O-Matic, when the loudest rumbling I’ve ever heard in my life begins. The whole house shakes for several minutes. Seconds later, my computer screen blanks out. Dead. Along with the TV, furnace, and lava lamp. Without the lights, it’s much darker in the room than it should be for two-thirty.
“No fucking way!” I scream, thinking about the ice-packed mountain that just happens to butt up against the back of our house. When I open the mudroom door to check the circuit breakers, I am greeted by a wall of snow.
“Cooper!” I yell, calling my beloved spitz husky to my side. At the same time, I work to close the door before too much snow tumbles further into our house. Cooper bounds down the hallway and shoves his front paws against the door. It clicks shut. “WTF, huh Boy?” I say. He barks his agreement.
We stumble through the darkness up the stairs to the second floor. I grab my high-powered X-Files flashlight (my dad ordered it special from the Internet after I made a fuss about how cool Mulder and Scully’s flashlights were) from my bedroom and turn the beam toward the window, trying to look out. Hard-packed snow, all the way up to the top of the frame, looks in.
“OMG!” I holler. “Coop, we’re freakin’ buried alive!” Cooper and I race up the attic steps to the third floor. As I was afraid, the windows are dark. We’re completely covered.
“What are we gonna do?” I ask him, starting to feel the fear that makes your balls crawl further into your crotch than seems healthy. Our house is far away from the neighbors, so they won’t be any help. Our phone is IP, so it doesn’t work when there’s no power. My parents and little brother aren’t due home from Aunt Celina’s until (at least) ten. Maybe later – if Aunt Celina makes her trademark “indigestible pizza sauce” and they have to spend some time in the rest area on the interstate.
All of which will be too late for me. If we’re truly buried under snow, I’m thinking oxygen is now my and Cooper’s greatest concern. “Damn global warming!” I yell to no one and slide open the attic window. Cooper and I begin to dig.
Three hours later, we’ve made some progress in an upwards direction, but no light. No air. My head starts to feel woozy. My cuticles are cracked around the knuckles. The house is as cold inside as outside. I start getting that warm feeling they describe you’ll get when you freeze to death. The end is coming quicker than I expected.
Easing back from digging, I think that maybe it’s best this way. It’s been a damn cold winter and they just took Dollhouse off the air. “What’s the point?” I mutter to Coop, who’s now lying by my side, looking equally exhausted.
But then I think of Buffy and Jupiter Jones and all the kids with a vision to make the world a better place. Teen Titans. Clay Aiken. The Balloon Boy. I can’t give up now.
Cooper nudges me with his snout and barks a Lassie life-is-really-worth-living bark. I rouse from my snoozy, oxygen-deprived slow freeze to make one last effort. I think of all the heroes I’ve known. If they were me, what would they do? Diana Price would probably just punch her way through the snow. The Hardy Boys might use some chemistry knowledge to melt their way out…only to discover that Aunt Gertrude has made them a hearty meal of beef stew, candied potatoes, and apple pie as reward.
Mulder and Scully would…”I’ve got it!” I scream at Coop. Pulling off my spectacles, I shine my super-powered X-files flashlight through the thick lenses. Twin beams shoot out at the snow pack, burning their way through the frozen threat. The attic becomes thick with steam as oxygen deprivation gives me giddy hallucinations. I giggle uncontrollably.
The flashlight/glasses combo does the trick; a now-cavernous tunnel breaks up through the snow to reveal the last light of day – and precious fresh air. Cooper and I gulp breath after breath as we lay on the now-steamy attic floor.
“Thank God for masturbation,” I gasp out to Coop. He barks in agreement.
For FUN, I put my stuff at www.GregoryGerard.net.
For SERIOUS, I put my stuff at www.JupitersShadow.com.
I invite you to visit my stuff.
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