45: Listless

The universe evolved, realised consciousness; after approximately a day of this, it appeared remorseful to observers and then forgot itself. Many, many years later, and yet still intrinsic to that infinitely listless and disinterested cosmos loitering in emptiness, they’d been a noose, one the remaining observers tried shooting into space. They’d called it a lasso when interviewed on the TV, named it Sheriff Gibbons live on air. Soon after launching, it caught around the nose of a plane on the way up; this supposed failure was cited by the commentators at the time as the main reason everyone present turned away and walked home abandoning their cars in the car park for as close to forever as a car can manage. Now, at some point lightly seasoned with remove, Old Mrs Chambers bought the Art Deco lift discarded from the town hall when it was being refurbished and she set it up in her garden with the help of her nephew and niece who used her basement to play guitars and hit boxes, sometimes even biscuit tins at Christmas. It was raised up from the ground by a wooden crane rented from the saw mill her brother ran. The rope entrusted with bearing the load of the lift and Mrs Chambers, who lay inside on a bean bag doing her puzzling, rolling hither and thither, revelling in it’s reflective elements - that rope bearing the erratic sway of a pensioner living her best life was the very same Sheriff Gibbons. Well, so, there is a gentleman called Sheriff Gibbons, as you’d expect, christened post-rope trauma, who often rolls up into town in a immaculate 1957 Bel-Air Chevrolet and to this day claims he can walk through walls if no water is present. When a youth, his father had bought the graveyard and tipped over all the head stones so his children could leap from one to another without touching the ground. Stumbling somewhat on the final mossy slab the young Sheriff Gibbons found himself not thwacking into the brick wall of the house edging the graveyard as he’d expected, but instead spending a good 20 minutes within the very substance of the wall itself, before coyly sauntering out into the house’s kitchen with a whistle, cradling a handful of miniature bricks. Finding the Stepson family were silently clearing up the supper plates, he feigned hunger and was duly offered various finger foods before Mother Stepson took him home, brickless. The eldest Stepson daughter took these tiny bricks her baby sister had since scattered in the empty fireplace and placed them on the mechanism she’d extracted from her Nan’s music box. Setting it in motion, she watched them rotate on the platform, the approximate tune of twinkle twinkle little star somewhat muffled by the pillow she had placed her bricolage on. Something or possibly someone looked away and began helplessly grabbing again at the bobbing ring in the water that had been thrown by their granddaughter yet was floating now beyond the reach of their will, efforts that seemed to the little girl, even at that young age, a lot like they didn’t want to grip on to buoyancy and the future it offered; perhaps she’s part porpoise she remembered concluding at the time. It had all got rather out of hand. The person splashing in the water faced upwards, their nose the final airway breaching the waters sky blue veneer. “No one really knows how babies are made.” they reflected as they sank fully below the surface awaiting some variation in the surroundings to intervene. Moments measured in wretches, hearts sold to toil, embers laid on embers, hope dug in holes. Sing to the earth, shout at the sky, maybe hum at the moon. Days robbed of daylight, feelings wrapped in tissue, contact a contact without tact, you won't be seeing them soon. But sing to the earth, shout at the sky, we’ll hum at the moon.