Their Days Are Numbered is a new year-long project authored by the collective Entropy community. It is a collaborative online novel written by the Entropy community on a weekly basis. A different author will write the next “chapter” each week, to be posted every Tuesday, following the previous post from the previous week, and following a very limited set of guidelines (that each author has one week to write the next piece after the previous week’s installment goes up, that installments should range between 150-1500 words, and that pieces should somehow incorporate a real-life occurrence, current event, news item, or other happening from that week).
Follow the entire “novel” here: Their Days Are Numbered.
The forty-second installment is presented this week by Shane Jesse Christmas.
XLII.
Knotted grass. I glance back at lights, loud music, young kids. Her books, her fashion magazines all on door. Not with her hostility. Disciplinary action taken by the boss. No need for this. Rubbish piled up outside. I drink while working. Track suits / brand names. I don’t know much. Underwear inside. I smirk in drunken icy background. Her money purse. Listed tears. Clothes off, actions recorded sweat steam and pressure overhead. Her books, her fashion magazines all tangled. Websites. Description as infantile attempt. Laughing Washington Square. He turns to his water. Wife wields her hips over the bench in Washington Square. He turns awful winter season. No new television. Old strawberries. No newspaper.
He tries to slide, then bags, ash sticks, Styrofoam. Night as legs. I’m in the same room of the United States. Nostrils. I’m in the human contribution. The process of strengthening. Wife is a cardboard cut-out. She slides, then penetrates in my ass. He rolls spindly cigarettes between his new screams. The strange assignment of nowhere. Headlines from New York Post. A smirk. Insects nestle are irritating. Spindly cigarettes between his fingers. All bored. Standing in front of them. Describing his time. The wife lurking in the good East River. Swamp. Oily carnage. The door opens. Take that. Pincers. Lawyers water East River. A cotton dress. This nightmare/ Blood drained from my boss. They’re building the O’Neil cylinder. The company’s holiday villa. He reads giant shots of Brandy. Fire in at four. Money. Polluted lobsters with bracelets around brow.
Constantly more – working. Track suits. Stumbles. Body swelters. Livers and lungs. No warm stuff, that’s warm drink stirring watching the breeze. Shadows. The O’Neil cylinder out in Morristown. Blonde mechanisms. A torn genus of the newspaper. He tries to slide. Diagnosis. He pulls wood from the front door. Splinters. Locusts. Posing. Temples for lease. Retail shop for lease. The dying art of breath. GIF living in an upstairs place. Amazonians. Bloodied hearts on electroshock cables. Padlocks. October at sea. East River. We upend ourselves. We drunken. Airless steps. I suffocate. Get lonely. A group of children. Pincers. Famine. She walks to the table. Rubbish. The posing, the pushing off.
Trains in the rail yard. The pale dawn. Someone else screams. A smirk. No idea how to describe himself. The rubbish bin. The dating website. She wields her hips over me. A smirk. Insects Cryo-patients chipped and thawed by jackhammers. Carnage polluting. Horizon stumbles. Body swelters. GIF as wax effigy / molten. He excuses himself from the table. Naked molecular manufacturing. Staten Island Ferry. Cryo-patients chipped. A coffee table, a double bed. Pizza Hut car park. I melt. I splice the mainframe. Never thought he’d be employed like this. Her books, her fashion magazines are irritating. Robotic self-replication, molecular cells. Elemental residue caused by GIF melting.
Xerox over Manhattan. Bubbling fats of gene therapy. Perpetual studying and her body. One old man altogether. Run hold her the sinews of her body. I hold my weapon and fire. Coffee shop for lease. The overpass. Water amongst plastic bags, double bed in the corner. Petrol bomb. The same room, his red mouth moves, disposing bottles, the group of children with their parents. I’m lost in Gramercy Park Hotel. Exploding glance back at the East River. The GIF living in an upstairs place. Dinner chairs. Wife is a cardboard cut-out. Painted nose on her. Bruises. Trains in overhead rail line.
