The fake blood started
from the fake gash on his forehead. It was easy
to get drunk at four o’clock in the morning
and remember all those weekends from a childhood
spent recreating those terrible midnight movies.

He couldn’t remember
the last time he had seen Tom Savini’s
name in the closing credits.

From the bathroom he could work
on his wounds and watch the Channel 9B
traffic copter go through its daily tradition
of crashing into the neighbor’s yard
and killing hundreds of innocent performers.

They wouldn’t be dead forever,
but no one would see them again until tomorrow.

That can be a lifetime
in the right tax bracket or dreamscape street corner.

It was a Wednesday
when he decided to put the makeup on
for his 8 a.m. English students. He worked slowly,
doubted himself sixteen times and marveled endlessly
at how old his knuckles were. His memory had started
going shaky after last year’s earthquake, but that wasn’t why
he still had pictures of his wife everywhere.

His reasons for leaving her note on the fridge
or that video on his computer were very boring.

He put the make-up on and went to class,
going out of his way
to be fifteen minutes late.

The sky was one part winter,
one part 1950’s apocalypse
and one part early fall in late-August.

The music playing from the surrounding
cars in traffic was maddeningly cooperative
with each other and almost made him
give up the whole idea completely.

He continued only because he was desperate
to know what it felt like when there was nothing
left to say and only a couple of places left to go to.

He wanted contentment to crush his feet
and thought about that the whole way to class. No one noticed him
in the halls and no one in the class was aware of his presence
until about twenty minutes after he had started talking.

The pictures of all fifty-eight unofficial Presidents
hung along the walls and made sarcastic faces while he suddenly
found all three hundred and twenty-seven students
completely fascinated with what he had to say.

Wonderful results
that were completely expected. He took full advantage and spent
five hours telling them about books that borrowed fire
from Hell to make the road to Heaven a lot more worth the time.

At greater length
he told them about his wife, the son who drank too much
in his beautiful Cadillac and even about the time he stood
on the seventy-fifth floor of The Good Faith Tower
and wondered how many steps it would take to reach
the next skyscraper.

It could have gone on forever.
The only reason why it ended was because
security had finally broken down the door.

He received so many compliments on the lecture
and horror make-up that he didn’t even mind
when he came by the next morning to find the contents
of his desk in the parking lot and six guards with shotguns
standing by the front door.

It was a small price to pay. He went home
and spent weeks in the basement working
on a masterpiece of sorts.

04/07/2010

Posted on 04/07/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard