Monday, February 15, 2010

Entry 18

THE GLASS MYSTERY

I won’t be able to read these words in the morning. Numerous shots of vodka have done little to steady my hand, although my thoughts have been pleasantly seduced. A dinner party with the leader of Russia, my favorite liquor induced fantasy, is begging for center stage on the outskirts of consciousness. I toy with it, placing the imaginary call to my housekeeper who’ll run over to Dorogomilovsky Market with the list of ingredients for the first course.

I’ve never imagined blood could spray so far or so fast from a swiftly opened throat. How would I know? I’m a desk jockey at the Embassy, an outside hire, not part of the official Foreign Service.

My friend says only men can cook meat properly, so I’ve invited him to the party to handle the roast. I saw the suckling pig he’d killed last New Year’s and curled at the bottom of a red plastic bucket. Such a tender tableau, it looked as if it slept rather than marinated. Later that evening, I warmed my hands over a make-shift barbeque haphazardly thrown together in the middle of a snow-covered parking lot. Toward midnight, our party continued upstairs in the kitchen of a spa abandoned after the Fall. I savored a bite of the crisp roasted skin of the butchered animal before heading downstairs to the sauna and the algae covered ice cold pool.

The rosettes in the snow surrounding the woman’s body attested to the amazing projectile strength of blood. Perfectly formed rosebuds as succulently red as the beads on the rosary I bought in Paris the year before.

7 comments:

  1. Interesting introspection. Not really my genre, but still interesting.

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  2. I love the writing. The first two paragraphs were great. The writing was fine in the third, but my eyes started to glaze. It doesn't feel right to go from the line about the throat almost immediately into this paragraph with what happened earlier.

    But great use of language.

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  3. O.O

    Those are my eyes.. wide with shock and horror.

    Well played, Clerk. I am hooked. I am especially digging the nearly schizophrenic leaps between memories.. So many thoughts to keep track of, I'm already lost.. But who cares! I wanna read more!

    That having been said... I hope the timeline evens out soon.. My brain would melt and flow from my ears like gravy running from a plate too generously filled on thanksgiving day in Austin.

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  4. I'm not quite following the story. Is he dreaming or is this happening? Is the blood spraying from an animal while cooking or is someone being murdered? This is interesting and questions are a good thing in terms of making one want to read on, but my questions are more of the huh-I-don't-get-it variety than the I've-got-to-read-it-to-find-out kind. The rosebuds are interesting and send a mystery element that is great.

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  5. I too am a little confused by what's going on. It seems to be jumping around a lot but I'm guessing that's intended.
    I would read on just to see if I could figure it out, but if it jumps around this much, I'd probably get annoyed and put it down.

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  6. I agree it is a bit choppy and I felt confused as well. This is not really my genre, but I may be enticed to read further to see what is going on, but not if I have to re-read more to figure it out. But, boy, can I SEE that blood splattering! Good job!

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  7. Powerful stuff here. I also get a bit glassy eyed (must be the Vodka) but very chilling. I never really get a grasp of the time period, though.

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