walk with a sense of humour

by chris.

i moved along the hallways with endless impressions of hands covering the walls,
pressed in cement or plaster or whatever the walls were made of. i moved silently
like cancer and no one knew i was there until brushed passed them, but in this
mass of people i don't think anyone gave me a second thought.

most people placed their hands in the handprints on the walls as they walked so
the walls were much more crowded than the center. they'd fit their hands in one
handprint, then move to the next, and on and on and on. the dirt and grease from
so many people was caked onto the handprints.

i walked down the middle. people were dragging their feet there. some were chewing
on sausages, sausages sticking out of their throats. some were eyeing the greasy
walls with disgust like i was, and many of these people tripped and fell. i never
fell and i kept moving in the
cold.

i've come to truly love the hard linoleum floors. my bare feet on the linoleum seem
to conform to their bumps and imperfections, and sometimes seem to become linoleum
themselves. linoleum scraping across linoleum is a halting yet satisfying sound.
i've come to love this sound as well.

you can't speak in these hallways. i've never been told the reason, but i've always
known the rule. i know i learned this at some time, but determining that time is
like determining the time you learned to keep your appendages out of a meat grinder.
you just know.i've come to a room before. yes, you do come to rooms, and you remember
them because you encounter so few of them. you come upon them by chance unless you
are taken there, and i have found thatyou do not want to be taken. the room i found,
at least two years ago i suppose, was classroom filled with desks and persons sitting
at the desks, hands folded, back straight, staring forward. they didn't even look when
i came in the room. what would be the teacher's desk had a stainless steel bowl on it.
i got closer to the bowl and looked inside. fifty or so tongues were piled upon one
another in the bowl, some rotting and some fresh it looked like, and a simple hunting
knife sat next to the bowl. the persons sitting in the desks had red-stained chins
like they'd stained their mouths with koolaid. you can't speak in these hallways.

of course, when i was younger, many people my age went into rooms, were ushered in
and kept there for years, taught, then let go into the hallways once more. and of
course, speech was allowed here, but i found i didn't care for it. a person sitting
next to me might ask me what my name is and i immediately grew completely bored and
ready to scream. but i played along and answered their little questions, and they
seemed more happy with my answers than they should have been, as if my answers gave
them some kind of physical enjoyment, a massage or an orgasm. i don't know how long
these orgasmic answers lasted but it seemed like they would never end.

you meet people there who say they've been inside rooms and so the whole world gathers
around them to hear their tales and their rants and their stupidity. i must admit i
was among this throng of people at first, eager to learn of what i'd never seen and,
probably, what never existed. after their little stories we'd clap and crave more
and beg for more. but the repetition of one story has made me decide that it is the
only true one i have heard, thus the only one i have found worth pursuing: two doors
down a certain hallway, light coming in the cracks around the doors, that people go
through and never come back.

back to me