Mark LaFlamme: The Screaming Room

Archive for the ‘Etc.’ Category

Your end of the world fantasy

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

If you were to tell me you never had an end-of-the-world fantasy, I would tend to think you a liar. A filthy liar, to be precise. You have so, liar. Probably elaborate ones, where you were sporting Mad Max hair and all of the women wanted you, even though all of the women were dead.

That’s how an end-of-the-world fantasy works. Everybody is dead, except for you. You are the last man/woman/child standing and the world is your playground, corpse-littered though it may be.

When I was a kid, I started having end-of-the-world fantasies all over the place. In one, I smashed all of the windows out of Brookside Elementary School and then went off to pee in the middle of Main Street. In another, I moved into a mall and lived with a family of monkeys.

Or some such shit. End-of-the-world daydreams are easy when you’re a kid. All there is to think about is an entire world where there are no rules except the ones that you make. You are king, president and grand poobah of the whole damn thing. You do what you want, when you want and if anybody wants to give you lip about it, well anybody can’t. Because anybody is dead and drawing flies in the street.

It’s a damn pisser that you have to grow up and see the flaws in that logic. Suddenly, you’re alone in a freezing world where you have to fight mutant dogs for scraps of food at the bottom of dumpsters. There’s no light, no

warmth, no triple cheese at the Wendy’s drive-thru. There’s no health care, no friend’s list, no one at all to talk to except the rats. The end of the world would be savage and lonely if you were unfortunate enough to be left standing. Not to mention, you’d break your glasses and be unable to read all your favorite books.

Do you know how to fix a pair of shattered lenses? I don’t think you do.

In “Village Store at the End of the World,” my boy Bertram has it all figured out. He’s got his little pissant store out there on Route 4 and he’s happy to watch from an easy chair and see what the end of the world really looks like. Turns out it looks something like this:

“I wish I could tell you how the world ended. I don’t know if anybody figured it out before the shit hit the fan. There wasn’t much time for figuring.

In the crazy hours after Europe went dark, there was talk that maybe a solar flare had blasted through the magnetic field and fried whatever was out there. That would do it, I guess. But it didn’t seem like the answer.

Europe had gone first, that was one thing. Everyone on the continent seemed to disappear like words erased from a chalkboard. Just… Gone. The world was buzzing with communication one moment and then the next, there was a big, black silence from that side of the planet.

Africa went a half hour later. Then Greenland and then the eastern edge of South America. Our brave leaders didn’t even try to address their people. Whatever doom was rolling across the planet was rolling as a wave from east to west and it was coming fast.

Some of us figured that out for ourselves and went to ground. Not many, though. There really wasn’t much time at all.

Before the news crews fled and the satellites came crashing down, there were talking heads on TV who insisted something had gone wrong at the super collider in Switzerland. Black holes or exotic particles, that kind of thing. I don’t believe a black hole was part of this. The planet still being largely intact and all.

But particles? Sure. I can buy that. Scientists have been tinkering over their heads for decades. They constructed billion dollar facilities where they could monkey with things they didn’t understand. They tried to tease out the secrets of the universe and maybe they brought forth some cosmic cannibal, instead. Some high energy monster that took about six hours to disinfect the world of almost all its life forms.

When it came, the world seemed to throb for two solid days. I was hunkered down in the basement for the duration and I could hear it – could feel it in my bones and in my teeth – buzzing like a wall of electricity that just kept coming and coming.

I kind of wonder how many people got safely underground only to go mad with the incessant hum of ruination.”

That’s my boy Bertram’s end-of-the-world. It’s all downhill from there. If you want to hear more about it, go here.

Posted in Etc. | 3 Comments »

Can you handle the truth?

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

You’re on your death bed. A stranger approaches you in your final hour and makes you an offer.

“Ask any one question you’d like,” he whispers, “and I will provide the answer.”

You might croak before you come up with your question. Because how can you pick just one when there are so damn many that haunt you?

Who killed JFK?

Who killed Marilyn Monroe?

What led to 911?

How was the world created?

Is there a God?

Is there life on other planets?

How were the pyramids really built?

When I was in eighth grade, would Kathy Sue Pendersneed have put out if I had asked her to the dance?

Irrationally, I hold out hope that each of us will learn the truth behind the great mysteries before we die. It’s just too maddening and bleak to think we might go to our graves unfulfilled. If the human experience is all about questioning, wondering and pondering, the finality should be satisfaction.

Don’t ya think?

I can’t promise you the answers to it all in “Box of Lies,” but I can promise you this. All the big questions are explored. A good bulk of them are explored in the title story – it’s kind of ironic that my Box of Lies contains truth.

But also check out “The Bender Argument” for one, sweeping answer to everything. Check out “Confessional” to get a grasp of why knowing might not always be the best thing. If, by the end of the book, you still don’t have a clear understanding of who killed Marilyn Monroe, you obviously missed something. Buy a new copy and start over.

Posted in Etc. | 3 Comments »