story boy — chapter 2

We are in the Overlook they call it, it's a sort of bulb on the side of Tower Ten it's like being in Liberty’s lamp Jesus Christ I am peaking on vertigo can't look down I guess it's the city all grey and portioned out, I see Burton looking at me, he's always looking at me, he comes at me like we are on a ship and sits with a slam on the red naugahyde bench at my side he’s a little wet.

I ask where you from? and I haven't even put my tongue away when he answers like a bite not on the map where I’m from.

Maybe it won’t be so bad here after all.

I am careful. I know I can’t say which planet then? or ask if maybe he’s a corduroy road hic, already I know it’s like Survivor in here,  you might think my roommates are dimwits but I have determined that a surprisingly high proportion of them possess an outlandish kind of intelligence, they just can’t quite land it.

How come it’s not on the map?

Got removed.

Where was it before it got removed?

There he points and my eyes follow his finger through the window and right away I’m in another cartwheel, I feel myself going going but before gone I save myself but it’s brief, I sit back down on the bench and then keel over for real.

Got the vapours Story Boy? somebody says as I pick myself up.

Everybody calls me Story Boy now, I don’t know this guy though, his head bobbles, his entire body is wracked, looks like Parkinson's but he’s smiling – I know it's anguish in temporary disguise – just a flash of something comes out like when I open the door to the news about my dead mother.

They call the Parkinson guy Shake, they call the wheelchair-bound guy he seems paralyzed one minute but then acts like a trout the next they call him Dolittle, lol, and there’s the guy who walks in circles he’s like some kind of cartoon, like the Tasmanian devil, the guy’s always banging into everybody they call him Fred Astaire and the fat guy, he’s gotta be the youngest one here although there’s something wizened about his silence like he’s doing whatever it is he’s doing with great purpose, they call him Hitchcock his pockets always bulging like his cheeks, full of what looks like fistfuls of brown sugar, and when he stands in the Overlook you get that silhouette, his hands going madly taking turns from pocket to mouth it looks like he’s boxing.

There are others, too, background characters, I think I’ll make it a horror story I mean like why not I got this horror bubbling, always have, I am half-relieved I am in captivity but also a little pissed I actually didn’t do anything wrong wrong – I don’t mean taxes or theft or lewdness – I mean murder, it's always just been the staircase in my mind, I’ve been shoving people down those stairs all my life the body count is in the hundreds. Sometimes I hurl them like it’s into a mouth they don’t even touch the stairs sometimes I chase them they feel every stair sometimes they hurl themselves due to what I am yelling at them and how close I am.

I can be unpredictable talk about the monster under the bed.

And speaking of, my mother hasn’t come visit me yet I wonder if anybody’s told her I’m conscious.

Today I looked down it’s not a city after all it’s green green green and a long line of brown then blue blue blue feels like Scotland, it looks woven, the boxes of green like plaid from up here, it’s strangely okay to look down I guess as long as there’s nothing to give it any perspective or scale it feels non-threatening and I don’t get even a hint of the vapours, I don’t feel like I’m gonna pass out.

I used to have to hold the ladder when my mother went on the roof for Christmas or other emergencies and sometimes I wished I could be at the other end so I could throw myself off, I’d stand there imagining what I’d look like, sometimes I threw myself down the stairs, too, what it must feel like at the bottom your foot right there on your shoulder your broken waist all you can do is blink.

But then a glitch, I can feel myself gaining perspective and just before I execute my third cartwheel I see it's a yellow dot I don't know how I can tell from this height that it's Creighton but I know it's him on a riding mower and I'm down.

Non verbal they call it and that’s what the guy across from me is, the gnarled-footed one he doesn’t say a word they call him Gak he just lurches around chewing his cheeks like they shoot horses don’t they. We call the deaf guy What with not one question mark but two, the second interchangeable with an exclamation mark deliciously knows as “a screamer” and italics, very onomatopoeic, it’s What?? or What?! depending on the sitch.

Okay so those, including Burton and Creighton are the main characters, I reserve the right to add my mother although I might force her to stay beneath the bed, I am the main character, of course, the protagonist AND the narrator hello my name is Story Boy come into my parlour.