A Fourth Grader's Final Writing Project
Jimmy Dixon
Fourth Grade
Mrs. Glockenspiel
A Vision of the Apocalypse
After the skies have melted and the men in business suits have stabbed their wives to death with baby spoons, after the rivers have started flowing with red reeking detritus and alien flesh-spores rule the wind, after every capital has turned into a mutli-ringed flesh auction, lorded over by bloated steam-powered biotech monstrosities, after the sun has given up and the moon has danced away forcing mankind to cling to the last vestiges of electricity for light, after the prognositcators, the card readers and the will-writers have turned the key and locked up shop, a small child carries his stuffed bear out into the ruined and pock-marked street of his small town. He looks left and he looks right, his young mind numbed already to the idea of rabid red-cloaked cultists wielding meat cleavers, to the reality of predatory house cats with batwings, to the idea of death jumping from body to body, spread by look and breath, and the boy finds the perfect spot and he sits and sucks his thumb, clutching his bear. Its name is Frankie, together they ignore the growing roar (a roar that has been buliding for a millenium, longer, a roar that snuck in through the grates, through the sewers, down from the sky and out from just behind you, a roar that deafens even as you ignore it). And as the liquid sky opens up again with fire, together they sit and dream a new beginning.
Proof read by: Mary-Jane Dixon [signed]
Fourth Grade
Mrs. Glockenspiel
A Vision of the Apocalypse
After the skies have melted and the men in business suits have stabbed their wives to death with baby spoons, after the rivers have started flowing with red reeking detritus and alien flesh-spores rule the wind, after every capital has turned into a mutli-ringed flesh auction, lorded over by bloated steam-powered biotech monstrosities, after the sun has given up and the moon has danced away forcing mankind to cling to the last vestiges of electricity for light, after the prognositcators, the card readers and the will-writers have turned the key and locked up shop, a small child carries his stuffed bear out into the ruined and pock-marked street of his small town. He looks left and he looks right, his young mind numbed already to the idea of rabid red-cloaked cultists wielding meat cleavers, to the reality of predatory house cats with batwings, to the idea of death jumping from body to body, spread by look and breath, and the boy finds the perfect spot and he sits and sucks his thumb, clutching his bear. Its name is Frankie, together they ignore the growing roar (a roar that has been buliding for a millenium, longer, a roar that snuck in through the grates, through the sewers, down from the sky and out from just behind you, a roar that deafens even as you ignore it). And as the liquid sky opens up again with fire, together they sit and dream a new beginning.
Proof read by: Mary-Jane Dixon [signed]
posted by PMJeepers | 7:40 PM
3 Comments:
I knew Jimmy. "ssssssigh" I knew Jimmy.
I wonder if this was perhaps one of the times when Jimmy's step-grandma did more than just proofread his homework?
Back when I was at home, I would see that old biddy around all the time. She was always holding a paper coffee cup with two hands. I swear. I know that sounds like a desperately-clever idiosyncrasy one assigns a character when introducing them, but I swear she was always holding a paper coffee cup with two hands. And my sister taught Jimmy when he was in second grade, the year his parents died in that fire and he was taken in by his grandpa and step-grandma. And she said that when he returned to school after taking a couple weeks off, there was a marked jump in his vocabulary. By the end of the year he was expressing a second grader's thoughts in a college graduate's words.
She said she also talked to his teacher the next year, and that Jimmy's writing had progressed--now his ideas were up to par with his vocabulary--but that it wasn't consistent thematically. Like, one week he would write about the genealogy of his dog, and go on about how he loved his dog like it were a person, and that it probably isn't a coincidence when people give their dogs human names, and so on. Real specific stuff. Real literal. You could see where he was coming from. But then the next assignment he would turn in would be some long-winded, garbled, almost threat, to no one in particular, and which had nothing to do with what was actually assigned. This here essay seems to be one of those. He would just occasionally turn in these threats, or warnings, or visions of the apocalypse, saying that if someone did or didn't do something, something would or wouldn't happen.
I don't know. I always used to think his step-grandma was up to something, and brainwashing him in accordance with some big masterplan she had--that she was operating as a ghost writer, using Jimmy as a mouthpiece for her radical memes and whatnot--but looking back, that might just have been because I wanted my hometown to be less boring. I mean, the only knowledge I really had to go on was that in the sixties Mary-Jane Dixon was a white member of the Black Panthers whose main concern in the nineties was to keep hot coffee from spilling on her. My mom said Jimmy's grandpa used to work at the bank back in the day and that he was as normal as you could get. So maybe they were nice people. And maybe they tried their hardest to keep Jimmy normal, but he was just a little too "off" at the time. Kids go through phases like it's nothing and Jimmy had every reason to go through a weird and creepy one when he was in grade school. I can't imagine what losing both parents in a fire caused by your birthday candles would do to a kid.
But, man, head of the class in political science at Georgetown would not be my first guess, that's for sure. Dude must've gotten his shit sorted out.
Someone has a mind crush on you..... and it's not me... also, the Boulderites are wondering if maybe you are all on drugs all the time..
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