Teenage Wasteland

We shoplifted. We did drugs. We got cornrows. We joined nudist colonies. We tied our skateboards to our best friend's car. We went on impromptu road trips. We conned grocery-store delivery men into selling us liquor. We broke into haunted houses. We wore ridiculous outfits. We got arrested. And what was that poster we had up on our bedroom wall?
This week on the Herkimer, write about your most cringe-worthy teenage memory.

The tweediest of professors, the most architectural of fashion editors, and the zen-est of Buddhist monks have recollections of their teenage years which cause them to cover their eyes and mutter in humiliation.

What's one of yours?

Write with guts!

HERKIMER

Snakes on a Brain

Even from the relative comfort of my bed on the second story of my house I could hear them. Had it been the wind, the rustling of the leaves would have been welcome, soothing. This was not that morning, though. No waiting for the breeze to waft in through the window and impart its freshness, no waking to the baking of skin energized by early rays of sun. Only urgency, only panic. Their scales rasped on the hardscaping below and on my eardrums as they came up the hill and into the side yard. They had given us the night to allow us to believe we were safe. They'd waited for morning and now they were here. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached the door in one motion.

Downstairs I found my sister. She didn't yet know about the hordes invading the space we'd played in for so many years, where our parents barbecued. I told her we had to leave, that the house wasn't safe any more, that we couldn't come back. I screamed at her that it had to be now, but I couldn't make her understand why. Then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that it was too late. A snake coiled itself on the back of our reclining chair and had its gaze fixed steadily upon her. It lunged - it flew - at her and knocked her down to the floor. Instantly, the place my sister fell became a swarm of snakes that had already made it inside the house and had just been waiting for their chance. They piled on her until I could no longer see any patch of humanity between the bodies of the growing, writhing mass of snakes.

I turned and ran for the front door. All of my energy flowed down and out of my feet, into the floor, displaced by despair as I realized I was up against flying snakes. Somehow I made it to my car. I drove until my exhaustion convinced me I'd put enough distance between myself and the snakes. I checked into a hotel so I could rest, regroup, and figure out what to do. I knew I wasn't safe. I was being chased, hunted, and I would never be able to stop running. I'd make my plan in the morning.

I slipped my key card into the door. I didn't even have to enter the room to see that the floor was a moving, tangled carpet of snakes, eager to drown me among them and dissolve me. I slammed the door closed and ran back down the hall. I felt helpless. I couldn't win my survival alone. I needed someone. The only person I found was the hotel's concierge. I told him, breathlessly, about the dissatisfactory state of my accommodations. He had no trouble believing me that my room was suffering from a snake infestation. He was conciliatory, certainly, but he felt that there was really nothing to worry about. No cause for alarm. He would take me to my room himself and remedy the problem himself, handily, closing the issue. I begged him, I pleaded with him, but I couldn't make him understand. I told him about my sister and what had happened to her. As I tagged along behind him down the hall he didn't turn his head my way or say a word. He strode, chin up, to what I knew would be his doom.

That was it, then, I thought. There was nothing else for it. The world was insane and would never comprehend the threat posed by flying snakes. I, alone, saw. I left the hotel and drove on down the road.

Grief took me, then frustration, and finally resignation. One faint glimmer of hope pushed its way through the cracks of my skull, though, and took root. It became an idea, and soon hardened into an imperative. I fled before the burden at my back at first, yes, but soon I was leading them. Unbeknownst to the snakes, I was luring them like the pied piper to the place where the great battle for the fate of the world would be waged, and God willing, the snakes would be vanquished. To rid the planet of this scourge, I raced for the land of the flying mongooses.

The Polecat

It started off being the usual 'friends getting together' type of thing - ten or so people sitting in a casual circle chatting in groups of two and three. Most slouched in old metal folding chairs similar to what you'd find at a garage sale for half a buck, while a few claimed the two upholstered pieces shoved into the far corners. Under normal circumstances I would have never sat in the sagging, foul-smelling chair due to my raging phobia of picking up lice, but as bad luck would have it the chair was mine.

As there was no one seated to my direct left or right (possibly due to the wisps of reek emanating from the cushions) I had the advantage of avoiding the chitchat and just observed. Everyone else seemed connected and comfortable, keeping their voices low and their heads bowed together as they conversed, appearing unaware of the filthy carpet, nicotine stained walls and crud encrusted 60 watt bulb encased in a dead insect tomb of a light fixture. Only I, sitting there perched on the very edge of my seat in an attempt to come in contact with as little fabric as possible, seemed to have pestilence on the brain.

Movement in the vicinity of my right foot caused me to startle and shift all the way back in the chair, instantly provoking a mad rush to wildly fluff my hair to dislodge the parasites. Fingers tangled and caught above my head, I felt it scurry up my leg, claw its way up the front of my shirt and nestle beneath my chin. Surprisingly I didn't scream. Even when the biting started I was silent, my only thought being "Why is no one watching?" "This has to be more interesting than what they're all talking about."

Rainbow explosions pop harmlessly against the low gray clouds in an orange fourth of July skyscape. Orange? The ordinary black backdrop of this patriotic evening has, for the moment, been replaced. I look down at the brick floor of my patio, thinking about nothing at all, my mind a post-apocalyptic-ly boring landscape.
"Oh my god..." Kelly's stunned whisper-shout reaches my ears through a thick haze, "...they've dropped the bomb."
My face snaps vertical. I've always feared nuclear holocaust. There are a few ways I don't want to die, and this is one of them.
There's no need to scan the horizon - I immediately ascertain that many miles in the distance, beneath the sparkling rockets, is an ominous ashen mushroom cloud.
"Where is that?" the words practically dribble off my lips. I'm thinking about which places might be appealing to blow up, wondering why L.A. wasn't the first choice. I'm worried for Kelly, and my family. I'm worried that I won't survive, and the darkly ironic implications of America's national holiday being nuked are not lost on me.
I want to reassure Kelly, but no words come out.

the corner of the student union

Working in a school, where the students stay the same age and I get older, has given me an odd sensation. Even while sitting alone at a table in the corner of the student union working on coffee, my physical body is slowly drifting back from everything before me while my view is magnifying to a greater extent. I've been double-crossed by a seemingly good-hearted mentor, who inspired me enough to take up teaching, and a feeling of dread is working its way up my back, straightening my spine and fusing all its joints. I turn my neck to look behind me and there is nothing. The world is falling into the back of my head, which is now unbearably heavy and pressed sideways against some stone pillar.

The Dentist's Office

Scraps of broken buildings lay landpiled everywhere like bodies of dead whales, hunked and white. I needed to get home. People on all sides of me strove forth leaning, dogged like swimmers through a sudden city downpour.

A stranger came in front of me and leaned up to look into my face. His hair buffed out black, cloudy, his eyes white, slick and clayfaced, and he muttered some plangent sound at me but he was clearly underwater, and I could not hear him. Nevertheless he grabbed my hand and led me down the street as if it was now his way we were taking. He yanked on my wrist and it hurt me with that uncomfortable slip that wet skin has against anything. I struggled pettily. The wet was thick, and grabbed my feet.

He brought me to the dentist's office, a white ramshackle half-hexagon kind of place with chipped rose moldings and walls paneled with whitewash now peeling, showing black. A roaring wind was in there, and the wet man shouted in my face to never go where I was going, but I fought against the wind. A plaque on the wall screamed SSSSHHH at me and I reached the door, the carpet squirting under my feet. The man blew out the other frame, a white wind sucking up a handkerchief, and as I crossed the threshold in the black night all was still.

Write about a dream (without saying "I dreamed").

"They're bunnies," the skinny guy said. He had the brown clothes, the brown truck. "Everyone likes bunnies. For one rabbit, we sell six bunnies. Sign here." He tapped his clipboard with the pen. They were hopping on each other, pinkish, on my porch, crowding the door, open a few inches. The lawn was covered with them, you couldn't see the grass. I kicked one back with my boot.

The guy gave me a look. "That one has a heart condition," he said, and touched his chest. "He can't take much stress." I looked at his name, above his pocket, embroidered: N. But when I looked again, it said: Nikolai. It's my name, I thought.

-Steven Barthelme, Nice Boy (Gulf Stream Magazine #3)

Hi from the Herkimer!

This week, write about a dream, but don't say "I dreamed." Make it as real as possible.

The weirder, the better.

Write with guts!

Pink bunnies, surprise oceans, and a strange sense of urgency,

HERKIMER