THE DEVIL COMBS HIS HAIR(one)
Liam Grant addresses his psychologist:The first time, I woke up laughing,
the second, the third, the fourth…
three weeks in, it wasn’t funny anymore.
By the fourth week, Irene was catching on.
On the nights that her & I spent together,
entering my dreams felt more like waking
up from nightmares——
Ilove you, she tells me,
Ilove you, I
love you. It seems
so easy for dreams to fall in love
with their audience & this particular dream,
Arielle, this dream-girl:
Casmir skin & eyes like so many clichés but not
a single photograph. I was unprepared;
in dreams, love feels like watching John Cusac movies
on acid, leaving Irene
a valentine card——you know, the ones we toss
once we’ve eaten the candy taped to it.
(two)
Open case notes regarding Liam Grant:Liam is experiencing a recurring dream, in which,
a girl, whom he refers to as
Arielle, visits him and tells
him that she “loves him”. At first, explained Liam,
he thought nothing of this. However,
after weeks of
Arielle’s presence in his life, he began
to reciprocate her love for him. It started as a small
crush, he said, explaining that
Arielle possessed certain qualities
which, he felt, his girlfriend, Irene,
was missing. Now, he describes his “relationship”
with
Arielle as, “more passionate than any [he] has
ever experienced”.
Perhaps, this behavior is indicative of an
unhappy relationship with Irene, whom
he tells me he has been with for over four
years now. Or, more interesting yet,
his discontent spreads much deeper than
boredom with a relationship; maybe
Arielleis a persona that Liam has created to cope
with his reported feelings of misanthropy and
“insufferable boredom” with his daily routine.
I am recommending weekly counseling in
hope that discussion will reveal to him
the irrationality of this “love” he feels for
Arielle.
(three)
Irene’s journal, left open:I feel empty, as if swept away by a giant
tempest——another woman! another woman! who?
where did he meet her? today, at work, I wrote a poem
for him:
Liam, for your love I’d sing to the sky Just for one chance to look you in the eyes And tell you how much I need you in my life Without you, all I know is strife. I hope you come back to me soon, my love, You never should have flown from me, my dove. Someday, sweet Liam, I know you will See, that the only girl for you is me.I don’t understand! We’ve been together four and
a half years without ever fighting for longer than a few minutes. I
hope he realizes what he’s walking away from. I’m not certain that he
will come back to me, but
if there’s one thing I know, it’s that nobody will ever care about him
the way I have for the past four years.
(four)
Liam recalls the night he left Irene:I broke up with her in our favorite
café & then crossed the street to get a drink.
In the bar, I sat next to a man with combed hair &
a well-tailored suit; he sat with good
posture, like one of those marine
recruiters that used to come around here.
After a few rounds, he leaned over and asked
me, “Woman got you down?”
“Yeah,” I told him, “something like that.”
We started talking & we drank to being men &
then it was last call. The patrons stumbled
out of the bar the way
latent Christians leave church
on Sundays. We sat outside
under the awning of the bar, passing a cigarette
back & forth.
He asked me what I thought
about love. “Love only comes
in dreams,” I told him. He laughed
as if my answer was some inside joke
between us & then I laughed too & sighed,
“Well, what can you do?”
“Actually, Liam,” he replied, “there is
a lot that I can do.”
(five)
The Devil addresses new tenants:it’s a simple trick——no fine print, hidden
clauses or loopholes. you make it so easy
for me these days. if I were to ask you to define
soul, the part of yourselves that you value and fear
over all others——
soul: the essence of being, the ghost in the machine, the accumulation of self——it’s funny
what you think that you know
and what I know that you don’t
and sometimes I want to tell you
to stop worrying about your souls
and start worrying about the parts of yourselves
that you already understand. your souls
aren’t worth shit until they are everything and
yours never will be
so long as I am in possession
of that single sliver of your life that each and every
one of you gave up
in exchange for a petty
favor.
good evening and a happy damnation
to you all.
(six)
A moment that Liam chooses to part with:I think it was the smell of piss
that woke me up. I remember lifting the sheets
in hopes that I was only drenched in sweat.
None of the other boys were awake yet &
they were never going to find out. I snuck
out of the room, carrying the soiled Batman sheets.
In the bathroom, I removed my slightly-off-whitey-tighties, grabbed a
towel to cover myself & headed
down the hall to the laundry room. It seemed easy
enough: dirty clothes in the washer & then the dryer.
I just might make it out alive, I thought. I poured
the detergent over the sheets
like milk.
I’m in the clear, I’m in the clear.I pressed start and readjusted
the towel around my waist. It was a thirty-five
minute cycle; two minutes passed, then four,
five, but at six, something went
wrong: the machine
started shaking & making a noise somewhat
like a helicopter & I wished that it were
so that I could get the heck out of there.
the machine just raised its voice and started
spitting out foam like a rabid dog. Within minutes
the others were out of bed—I could feel them
breathing. Accepting defeat like a proud,
reverent general, I turned to my audience
& bowed.
(seven)
The devil on love:to give yourself away
in all tenses——a compilation
of past, present and yet to be determined——
is to say, “this is
I, take it all.”
Even the lowest moment is a prerequisite
for the most beautiful thing
this world has to offer.
(eight)
Liam Grant to his hospice nurse:It is decades later & I still
think of her, still wonder why
she left without an explanation or even
a last name. I gave up on looking
for love a few months after she stopped
showing up when I turned out the lights.
as if
I were the dream & she
had finally woken up. Last night, I dreamt
of a man who once asked me what I thought
about love. This time, I woke up before I had a chance
to answer him. I had pissed myself
again. I didn’t get out of bed; I had no one
to hide from.
© Colton Huelle 2010
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Colton Huelle lives & writes in Manchester, New Hampshire. His work has been published in The Houston Literary Review & The Catalonian Review. He is the author of one chapbook, Human Despite the Fire (Sargent Press, 2010) and is currently working on a full length manuscript, tentatively entitled, The End of the Calender. As a child, his grandfather told him, “Aspire to inspire before you expire”. He’ll get around to that someday, but for now, he’s focusing on his grandfather’s other piece of advice: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse to the trap gets the cheese”.
