Lance Olsen - Sewing Shut My Eyes

76. NEWS: BREAK

A blueblack fly alights on the eyebrow of a young black boy whose facial skin has shrunk and withered like

666. HOPE FLOATS

99. THE GREAT WHEEL SPINS

The great wheel spins, brilliant light fizzling like fireworks. The audience shouts insanely. The game show host smiles confidently. Bertha Marcella, fifty-eight, from What Cheer, Iowa, with a son in the Marines, jumps up and down, her fat chugging, and claps her tiny hands in glee.

Then a shadow crosses her face.

She feels the pang.

Feels the elephant sitting on her chest.

The lightning in her left arm.

Her face muscles slacken. Her hands drop to her sides. Her eyes look up at the ceiling in disbelief. Bertha opens her mouth, sticks out her tongue, and topples over backwards.

She is wearing, Ker notices, a Timex on her left wrist.

31. THE DISCOVERY: CHANNEL

A cartoon dustcloud churns across the cartoon desert under a cartoon sky that’s eerily pink instead of blue.

It’s Wile E. Coyote. He’s wearing a pair of Acme rocket boots. And the Roadrunner is doing that thing the Roadrunner always does, just kind of gliding nonchalantly along on those whirling legs of his… cool, calm, dum-de-dum, with even this like semi-reptilian smirk carved into its beak.

Only something’s wrong here.

Ker expects those rocket boots to blow up any second. Or, you know, a huge rock or cactus to zoom out of the desertscape and slam the poor carnivore so hard he can’t stop vibrating for the remainder of the episode. O-or maybe some other gadget he tried to use earlier in the skit (an anvil, say, or an Acme ICBM, or a turbo-powered car right out of the Jetsons’ garage) to appear and burn his sorry ass to a crisp cinder.

Since, as Ker and every other philosophy major who’s ever watched this show knows, Wile E. is none other than the animational embodiment of Sisyphus, and the Roadrunner his boulder, and the desert his hill, and the poor guy is just never going to win; it’s so obvious it hurts. He’s going to fall, explode, leap faithless into oblivion, squish, become existential flypaper for every bit of bad karma the uncaring universe can dish out. That’s the given. But his dignity (oh, yeah, have no doubt about it, folks: that’s dignity you’re witnessing there) arises from the fact that he knows this and just keeps on going anyway, fuck the degenerate swine at Acme, you’ve got to believe .

Except… he’s gaining ground, is the thing.

Wile E. Coyote’s actually closing the gap. There goes another ten yards, and another five, and he’s stretching both arms out in front of him, sort of leaning into the momentum as the exact same background cycles over and over again behind him, and the Roadrunner is actually looking over its shoulder, a little nervous now, that frozen smirk beginning to melt, and Wile E. reaches down to the control panel on his belt and hits OVERDRIVE.

Zoooooooooom!

And, wham , he’s got him!

Yep.

Wile E. grabs the Roadrunner by the neck with one hand and turns off his rocket boots with the other and there they suddenly are, huffing in the silent desert, orange sun beginning to set behind them.

Holy fucking cow.

Only… hey… what’s that?

They… embrace ! Yeah, and if the truth be known there’s nothing female about that big bird and… what the hell’s that all about???

The Roadrunner slips Wile E. his tongue, and Wile E. reciprocates, a-and pretty soon it sort of inches up on Ker that the Roadrunner’s just been playing hard to get all this time… yeah, that’s it, the whole thing’s been one big come-on… and now what you’ve got yourself here are two really randy cartoon characters, a-and… whoah… old Wile E.’s getting down on his paws and knees… a-and the Roadrunner’s kind of shuffling up behind him… a-and, argggggh , that ain’t no tongue, man, that ain’t no beak…

169. THE LOVEBOAT

Nona Nova, hospital nurse, stares forlornly at herself in the mirror, unzips her uniform, reveals her tight belly, bronze skin, pert breasts barely hidden under lacy bra. She runs warm water in the sink. Splashes her face. Reaches for a handful of paper towels. When she looks in the mirror again another head floats behind hers: Rex Rory, flamboyant resident. Nona cracks a smile.

Rex steps into the women’s restroom quickly and shuts the door behind him, flashes her a flawless grin.

They embrace.

“Oh god, how I’ve missed you!” Nona murmurs into his ear.

He squeezes.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he whispers.

They kiss.

She reaches for his belt. He reaches for her breasts. For her belly. For the astonishing curve of her spine.

“Hey, wait a second,” he says, feeling that weird bulge in her panties. “What’s this?”

33. DUCK & COVER

51. A PRICK

The male platypus possesses a hollow claw, or spur, on each hind leg. The spurs are connected with poison glands. The platypus pricks and poisons its enemies when it feels threatened .

9. PRIME: TIME: LIVE

There is no white bouquet of chute, no slowing of momentum, no sound save the whipping of wind far above the tiny red, white, and blue dot.

You watch him flap his arms.

Watch him kick his legs.

Speed down, faster and faster. Shoot down. Hum down. Hurtle straight for the jagged rocks and shallow river below. The strong current. The icy water.

The twisted bodies of those who tried and failed before him.

188. ADDRESS AT VISION 31

“Uh-oh,” Kerwin says, glancing at the last bite of his sandwich pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

He isn’t feeling so hot all of a sudden.

His stomach’s queasy and his head’s all… it’s kind of like when you have the flu and the rest of the world looks like you’re squinting through a layer of Saran Wrap someone’s coiled around you.

He starts giving some serious thought to that mayonnaise.

It did taste sort of funny.

Sour, like.

He puts the last bite of his sandwich on the end-table next to his bean-bag chair and, weh-hell, just leaves it.

Plus he hasn’t been paying attention to the time, but now the light in the room’s changed for the unmistakably more somber, taken on a resolutely late-afternoon hue, unless obviously the sky has clouded up, in which case it could be any time of the day… only he senses Syndi should be here by now. The apartment should be full of her presence. He should be smelling dinner cooking. He should be listening to her tell him about her day as she tinkers in the kitchen.

Maybe it wasn’t her on that show…

After all, the idea didn’t even suggest itself until minutes later, did it, which only goes to prove how the mind isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, you know?

Maybe Syndi has a twin sister… did he ever think of that?

O-or maybe not a twin so much as a sister who looks enough like her to be mistaken for her twin sister.

Only Syndi doesn’t know because they were separated at birth.

O-or maybe it’s possible, given the ultimately limited genetic resources on the planet, that someone shares enough of her cellular patterns that on a tv, across great distances, she could easily pass as Syndi.

It could happen, Kerwin thinks, reaching for his beer and then deciding against it.

Fer shure.

Why not?

3. OPEN HEART MESSAGE