The Ancient Shark Of Despair's blog

Thursday, May 17, 2007

So we sped around the corner and nearly forgot that we were driving, we went so fast. I thought that it was because it was so important, but it could have easily been the intense adrenaline that I smelled in them. I looked around, giddy. Moe grinned quietly and looked away. Sarah said that we were going to do this and that we couldn't fail. We just couldn't.

Carolyn whispered across the car. We couldn't tell what she meant or which of us she was talking to, but we did know that we couldn't afford to be held back by her freaking out again. I don't know when she last left that house, but being all cooped up like that for so long can't be healthy for you.

We were juiced.

I think Sarah just burst out with laughter but didn't even really get going before she pulled it back in again. It's okay, Sarah. Laugh!

She burst out again and Moe smiled. She ripped apart and couldn't help it, Moe put his hand on her leg, maybe to tell her it was okay and that he was there. Carolyn screamed at us. She said that we were going to hit him. She said it really loud and it made us all stop smiling and grinning and laughing.

We swerved and I could tell by the way that the dust settled when we finally stopped that we hadn't hit anyone. If we had hit someone I wouldn't have noticed the dust settling, just the screaming remains of a vicious struggle.

We all got out really quickly. Carolyn was probably the quickest. It's funny, we must have only been driving for about ten minutes, but it was long enough for something like this to happen.

She rushed at him and tried to understand what was going on. We were more calm.

"Where is he?" She shouted. "Where did he go?"

He had clearly left. I don't know. I guess having a ton of metal trying to kill you will do that and I guess there's no reason to suspect that we weren't.

I suspect that Carolyn was just being emotional. Like, imagine she didn't actually see it. Imagine she actually just freaked out because all of a sudden she couldn't handle how far away she was from her heart. I joked to myself how we should just burn her house down.

Moe and Sarah secretly agreed with me that maybe we didn't agree with Carolyn. I didn't see anyone.

Man, what can go so wrong that you wind up this far away from home with a stranger who's just pulling you through the countryside in a ton of twisted metal, almost killing people that don't exist.

"He was right here!" She screamed out to the trees and us. "I saw him! I saw him right here!"

She looked at us.

Just flames tearing her house apart.

20 May 2007

Carolyn was keeping quiet after her last freakout. I guess that's she under a lot of pressure. Moe's been keeping quiet. I'm telling you a secret.

We stopped off for a break. Everyone went off for some time alone. I stayed in the car.

"Hey, Moe. That's pretty weird how your Mom just went crazy like that. It's like she's only now coming to grips with the fact that her Husband has been missing for twenty years." I smiled at him. "That's about the same time that you were born. Hey?"

It's okay, Moe.

Moe shrugged. I guess he didn't really know what to make of it. Moe knew all sorts of secrets.

I got out of the car and started walking.

"I want to show you something." He said.

He led me along a path that he made up as we went along. He told me to not stop following him, and I'd soon find out what we didn't know we had in common. I was sure that we wouldn't find it and what we were looking for would fizzle away. Kinda like Carolyn's freakout. I was expecting we'd walk for hours until Moe gave up and didn't even cry, he'd just end up saying that it wasn't important and that we should go back to the car. The others are waiting for us.

I was even going to give him a few minutes to before I told him this, but I couldn't help but notice the tingling feeling I was having all over my body.

Moe stopped walking and looked back at me. We were so far away from the car. I don't know how we managed to walk this far so quickly. Normal people wouldn't have been able to. He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled softly. This is what I wanted to show you.

All over my body my blood was rushing and gushing and rubbing around, over and against all of my nerves. I could just hear my soul humming and I could swear that my bones were vibrating.

You know, I think that most of the time I spend in life, I spend it fighting back waves of powerful energy. I guess I always just try to hard to control everything and it doesn't work. How could it? That's not how energy is supposed to flow.

"Don't be scared." Moe told me. "You have to let go."

He was bright red and the world shook around him. You couldn't not trust him. He was wearing a cape.

"This is an adventure." He reminded me.

I spun around and tried my best to get so dizzy that I would pass out. I wanted to escape, but at the same time I wanted to become the world around me. I spun so fast that all I could see was the complete lack of people lying to you. For once. There are no problems. When a person speaks to you, you know that they're not going to ask something of you. You can just donate your love, and that's cool. No one is asking anything of you.

"What's going on?" Sarah asked. She must have some how caught up with us. It's funny, I thought we were so far ahead, but now I guess I could have been wrong, just like everything else in life.

It's a secret.

I couldn't stop spinning if I tried and Moe couldn't even speak. I guess his super powers just take over and he can't talk anymore. Just these emotions sweeping over his brain, and he can see perfectly from a billion invisible angles. He's got a million different perspectives turned on and he can't quite make one voice fit.

Sarah screamed at me to stop. I think I might have lifted off with all my spinning. Moe was unsettling our realities, just ripping up our ideas, but quickly retreating before we noticed. Sarah couldn't quite tell what it was she wanted, like she'd lost the idea at the tip of the tongue. As she tried to force it off onto us, it all turned into bunch of mistakes. She couldn't express how she wanted to feel and all she ended saying was that I should stop.

I slowed down a bit and thought that maybe they couldn't understand. Moe looked at the ground and was frozen, he was so still.

"It's mystical." Sarah whispered just loud enough for us to hear.

No.

"It's magical." Carolyn corrected her. She turned and walked away.

22 May 2007

See, Moe and I are sitting in the car. And we're driving. We've stopped at a four-way crossing in the middle of the desert. This guy comes up to my window, which is open, and balances this little plastic lizard on my steering wheel. And he's grinning at me with a slick of a smile and he nods his head like I agree with him.

Moe was sleeping in the passenger seat and I couldn't wake him because he was powering up. I couldn't do super powers because I didn't have anybody to do them with. I felt safe though. The guy was practically telling me that I couldn't go. The lizard was always about to fall off. He put his face in the car and smiled softly, while reaching across me he picked up a pair of sunglasses that I hadn't noticed before.

He smiled at me and fell back into the world. I see him anymore. The sun was behind him and I kept trying to see but I could only just make out his outline. I think he fell down backwards and landed with his body straight out. I couldn't know though because no matter how I looked at him all I could see was the sun blinding me. Without those glasses I was pretty useless right now.
..[endif]-->

He opened his mouth but I guess it was pretty useless too. He gaffed. He told me that I was him and I joked to myself that I couldn't really make sense of that and I joked that what he said had been useless to me. He told me that we'd lose him and I thought that would be cool so that he would take his lizard and I could leave.

I was about to ask him to give back the sunglasses when I heard Moe wake. I turned to him and I could see clearly all over again. I told Moe that the guy took his sunglasses and that he couldn't speak and that I couldn't see and maybe I had his voice because he sure had my sight.

Just when I wanted Moe to join in my joke I turned to the guy and it didn't matter that I could see all over again because the guy was gone and that was what I could see. I told Moe that I was about to whip out a super power on him and make him give the sunglasses back. There are all sorts of super powers that I could have used. I could have made him tell me who he is. I could have made him speak. He wouldn't have stumbled over his ideas because that would have been my magic working on him.

"Where is the lizard?" I asked. I asked before Moe did. I didn't want him to think that I was lying. Maybe I could even use a super power on him to make him believe in me.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Carolyn didn't know where Ric was, but she could feel that we were getting closer. I told her that as long as she kept believing, everything would be okay. I didn't really believe myself and the only reason I said that was because we were desperately trying to find Ric and we couldn't cover it up with the old feeling of "Oh, this is an adventure, let's just do this and we're having fun".

We were having fun in this vague sense of mystery sort of way, but there was nothing behind all of it. We needed some sort of sign, that's something that's gone missing since we landed ourselves up with Carolyn. I guess she sucked up all the room we had. It's like she's fat emotionally.

So, we're all looking for Ric and none of us have any idea where to find him.

I feel like I'm turning into a lizard. I told Moe this and he just nodded. It's like I'm seeing what I'm saying to people from a distance. It's like what I think and what I say are drifting apart and the whole time I want to reconcile everyone with a joke here and there, but it doesn't work.

I think that when I get back home I'm just going to do things differently. Like, I'm going to call up the landlord instead of him having to call me up every day. I can just see him trying to find me on some weirded out dreamscape. He's in bed sleeping quietly, but in his mind he's wading across swamps cutting his way through impossible undergrowth. Every time he rips his skin walking through a bush of thorns he looks up and calls out to me.

Back at home is his body is getting restless and he can't help but move around while he sleeps. Sometimes he falls off his bed.

"You can't do this, Shark." He says to me. "You have to let people in. You have to let me in."

We keep driving through the night. Every now and again he pops back into my mind. I wonder if we're getting any closer to Ric.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

We found another town somewhere. The fair had also found it and had set up its tents. All you could hear was carnival music bubbling out between children shrieking. I got out of the car and scoped around. Moe thought it was safe so he told Sarah and Carolyn to get out.

We walked in as a group and tried not to stick out too much. I led the group and Moe was by my side. Sometimes people would look over at me and I would just look straight back at them and then they'd notice that Moe was looking at them too. Most of the time they would just stop and pretend like they weren't looking at the shark, but sometimes they would apologise.

Being on an adventure for so long will do things to you. Our minds had hardened. I could smell fear coming from the townspeople. I wanted them to feel alright, I wanted to tell them that it was okay, but this wasn't the time for that. It was getting dark.

We stopped walking and let ourselves take in our surroundings. We were in the middle of something exciting. The town was buzzing and people's laughter sounded scared. Every now and again someone would make eye contact with me. A large sign had been put up out of reach of the crowd. It carried a face on it. The face carried a seriousness and depth that glided over the folk. I don't know if they were aware of what was going on around them.

Leonard Cohen was playing in the main tent at midnight. That's what the sign said.

It started raining and the crowd hid underneath the cover of the tents. None of them could see the aeroplane that circled above us. I could made out two figures in the plane. There was a young girl in the back. She couldn't have been any older than Sarah.

We had four hours to wait until midnight. I told the others that they should go their own routes. We needed to each one of us follow our own journey and discover our own path tonight. I told Moe that we'd meet up at the main tent at midnight.

We split up and almost immediately I could hear a familiar whistling coming from a nearby tent.