November 18, 2005
Three
Two days before the car sex, the crying and the yelling, Phillip gave Peter and his sister a ride back to their house. Peter’s sister’s name was Angie. Angie was looking at him funny the whole ride to their house, then for a second before she got down she gave him a sinister smile.
Angie was Amanda’s best friend. Angie’s bedroom overlooked the garden in their house…
Raymond Williams opened the garage door as he headed for his date. He hadn’t had a date in a while, and wanted to look his absolute best. His hair, however, was determined to not let him get away with it and refused to settle down. He fought with it through the rear-view mirror as he headed into the street.
Somewhere ahead of him a man was yelling at someone else to stop. He looked up, but didn’t see anything.
“Some stupid house-fight� he thought, and went on fixing his hair.
Amanda Delvet was still running on the side-walk away from Phillip. She ran down the curb sobbing, broken-hearted, cheated, betrayed, unaware. She crossed the street turning to see if Phillip was still behind her.
Raymond Williams turned his eyes from the mirror to the wrecked face of a pretty twenty-two year old, smashed against his windshield.
The screeching tires was the last thing she heard. Phillip McCain kissing a red-head at a party was the last image her brain displayed just before it permanently shut down.
The rain began to fall on Phillip as he held his love, life-less, in his arms. He never really felt guilty about the red-head until now.
Raymond Williams missed his date.
The neighbors of the street chipped in to build a speed-bump where Amanda had been hit.
So it goes.
Five years later, a kid was skating on that same street the way kids go around skating not caring about holes or creases in the ground. The kid went crying to his mom about scraping his knee when he’d tried to jump the useless speed-bump infront of his house. Although it seemed like nothing at the time, the injury would cause the kid pain for the rest of his life, whenever it got too cold or he ran too much.
Fifteen years after THAT nothing else exists and the pain in my knee is the least of my problems as I concentrate on Kathryn, trying to not die and wondering how long it’ll take Mtv to get here… it’s funny the places your mind goes when you’re about to die.
All this will become relevant.
November 13, 2005
Two
He couldn’t figure out how the picture ended up there, or even when the picture was taken. He didn’t know someone had seen them.
It happened on the yellow slide,
(pause)
…in the garden,
(pause)
…in Peter’s house.
Everyone was out there, but he was sure no one had seen him. As sure as you can be of anything when you’ve just drank three quarters of a bottle of whiskey, anyway.
Amanda wasn’t there yet. The red-head was. Amanda was stuck in traffic, the red-head was stuck to his tongue. He didn’t really remember how it happened, he just knew it did. What happened before or immediately after was little more than just a vague blur. Like something you dreamt when you were five, and 15 years later you’re not sure if it was a dream or you imagined it, or if it actually happened.
What he did remember, was Amanda bringing him Alka-Seltzer the next morning.
The picture was still a mystery though.
Amanda had hired a private investigator to follow him around and find out if he was cheating on her as she suspected. The detective had followed him out of his house that day alone in the dark and then crept into the party to follow his every move. He had hidden behind the big bush in the back of Peter’s garden. When he and the red-head had come out he had been carefully placing the night-vision filters on his Powershot S330 Digital ELPH Canon camera. Of course, he never cheated on her before that day, so as Murphy’s Law would have it, that day he did. When he and the red-head sat on the slide they were exactly in front of the detective’s camera… he should’ve known. So now, the detective was shooting his camera away while he was kissing this red-head whose name he hardly remembered…. Wait a tick..
(pause)
her name… what was her name?
(pause)
There’s no way Amanda could’ve possibly thought he was cheating on her. No way. It hadn’t even ocurred to him till that day. No way. No way in hell.
What is it with people comparing stuff with hell?
(pause)
What was that red-head’s name?
(pause)
So the detective idea is out of the question, but who took the picture then?
(pause)
Jesus, what was the girl’s name?!
(pause)
All I know is she used to hang out with Angie (incidentally, Amanda’s best friend) a lot.
(pause)
SHIT. SHIT. SHIT. FUCK. SHIT.
…
November 7, 2005
One
If there was a right way to tell this, I would probably begin by telling you where I’m from, what my name is, and why I’m here. And most importantly where I am. The truth is, there is no right or wrong way to tell this. Nor is there a simple, comprehensible explanation. So don’t expect to understand it, just accept it. Everything will become relevant at its due time. Everything will become clear at its due time.
One of the first things they teach you in writing class is that fiction HAS to make sense, and that reality – in turn – doesn’t. Fiction has to have an explanation of some sort, however crazy it may be, things can’t just happen. They can’t be there just because that’s where they happened to be. Whereas in reality, things that don’t make sense, happen all the time. Such is life.
What happened to Marcia that morning was real.
If we choose to believe a certain group of scientist-philosophers of our time, it’s not real anymore, thus: was real.
This page you see is real. The chair you’re sitting on is real. The people and/or walls around you are real – they exist. Whatever exists is part of the universe – what doesn’t exist, isn’t. Whatever is behind the wall you see, doesn’t exist and so, doesn’t matter. If you can’t see it, it’s not there. And you are the center of the universe.
Somewhere in the universe, at 11:30 PM twenty years ago, a couple was having sex in a car at the end of a street. Above the car, there was a huge branch attached to a tree next to them.
On the tree trunk there were four letters and three symbols: AD + PM = heart.
Amanda Delvet. Phillip McCain. Love. She was twenty-two. He was twenty-four.
Amanda got out the car crying and screaming. Phillip ran after her, tearing the picture in his hands into a million pieces….
a very irrelevant Prologue
Why 42 towels? Why does anything that happens, happen?
To explain any of this would be quite irrelevant and pointless. Mainly because the whole point of a tautology is that it needs no explanation. However, if this does not suffice, I offer this: If it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen.
If you’re still not satisfied, I refer you to page one of the fifth book in the increasingly innacurately named Hitchhiker’s trilogy, you might find comfort in it. Though it won’t help much because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.
If you’re still not satisfied, then you’re still not satisfied.
Now, on with it then.
42 Towels 