Twisted Tales

Twisted Tales

These were a fun series of Performance Art Readings that I did at various Art Galleries, Installations, Coffee Houses and Benefits in Northern California.
They are modern fairy tales for adults and like most fairy tales
they are not quite what they seem.
Enjoy.

"...his readings are like darkly comic cocktails. One part Brothers Grimm
one part Hitchcock mixed lightly with urban paranoia and served with a twist."

The Huntress Claims Her Prize

Smoke shrouds the dimly lit room, layered in a miniature cloud formation.
Music runs counterpoint to dislocated dialogue as you sit watching the party flow.
You’re packing a twelver of Weideman’s Bohemian brew.
Six of the litter, have already met their fate.
You’re flying high, debating whether you should maintain your holding pattern
or dive back into the twelver and take a fast, dirty slide to insensibility.
Hell, it’s Friday.
You flirt with the platinum blonde neo-gothic chick on the couch behind you, but her disinterest borders on rejection so you quickly turn away and pop another top.
Fine tuning the alcoholic buzz that you’ve been cultivating so carefully.

Then she walks in.

Her face, framed by midnight hair, charges the room like a defiant thunderhead.
Her smile is cruel and hungry.
Her body is bathed in skin tight, black leather.
Her eyes flash like warning ambers on a slick wet curve.
Projecting an aura that shouts...danger.
Your sanity teeters on the brink, escape just a pop-top away.
Then your eyes meet hers and in that instant you’re snared in the web of her smile.
Trapped like a fly in the spider’s lair.

She cuts through the crowd like a sharp stiletto.
The huntress, hungry to claim her prize.
You rise from the chair, drawn to her like a puppet on a string.
As she moves closer, her eyes radiate desire.
There’s the look of an itch, needing to be scratched.
And, being an obliging kind of guy, you decide to offer your assistance.
Slowed by the alcoholic haze, your brain rummages through its disordered files,
desperately seeking a suitable come-on line.
You assume a practiced pose of disinterested male arrogance.
Slipping your lips into a slight sneer, you begin the stalk.
Cigarette dangling, James Dean like, from your mouth, you plunge into the maelstrom like a salmon ready to spawn.
You pace your movements, arranging the encounter to take place at the tightest juncture of the swirling revelry.
Where bodies intermingle in a mass of manic movement.
When you both come abreast, her sensuality is like a kick in the balls, a physical force, over powering in it’s intensity.
She gives off a scent of pure, unadulterated woman.
Your fever rises, you’re ready to take your best shot, but as you start to make your move, the scene skips a beat.
Your confidence is cracked by a subtle nuance of doubt.
Her stare, seems slightly askew.
Her attention is focused, just over your shoulder.
Your hands stop in mid-flight, fingers clenched in the air.
She brushes by you and feverishly embraces the gothic chick and promptly sticks her tongue down her throat.

You stumble back to the Weidemans.
Forced to caress cold aluminum.
You french the condensed moisture off the lip of the can.
Just before you suck down the numbing bite of cheap beer and oblivion.
As you watch them rub, nipple to nipple you realize...
,,,sex in the nineties, can be a bitch.

The Hunger

I can feel it.
It’s a trembling tension, yawning inside, a twitching itch, sighing to be scratched.
It’s almost more than I can handle.
Nibbling at my nerves like tiny teeth, eating away at my self control.
It awakens a hunger inside me, a need........to feed.
It’s time to connect!
Time to beat feet down the street and dive deep, into the heart of the neon night.
Out the door, down the stairs, I’m right on track.
Forget the car, I gotta feel my body movin’.
Gotta feel the sweat just coolin’ my face in the sweet night air.
Gotta feel something besides this burnin’ in my soul.
My brain is watering.
Circuits flowin’ like a pavlovian rain forest.
It’s just up ahead.
Licking my lips with swift nervous strokes,
I race on, my feet barely touchin’ the sidewalk, goosebumps rising from my skin in silent eruptions.
I see others in the night.
Small clustered groups huddled together, just outside the glare of the shop lights.
Frantic eyes, nervous gestures, these are my people!
The hungry ones, floatin’, circlin’, waitin’ to dart in again and again to tear off another chunk of some good times.
Their minds, racin’ through twisted mazes.
Their circuits, buzzin’ with the juice.
I feel at home with this dread tribe.
Umm, I can smell it!
Oh! I can almost feel it!
Slipping’ into my body, singing through my nerves and dancing’ in my brain.
As, I lunge forward to make my buy, completely focused on my upcoming high.
The only question they ask of me……
“Was that a double mocha?”

Night of the Beast

I walk through the dark, breathing in the hot humid night.
My brain is reeling, saturated by alcohol and herbal inhalants.
It's circuitry crackling with impulses, fine tuned by chemical substances.
Alone in my musings, my footfall has been the only sound in this silent landscape.
Still I feel as if I were being stalked.
I can sense a flux in this energy flow that we call a city.
A subtle but noticeable strain on reality.
I become aware of a soft sound in the distance.
Insinuating at first, like a fleeting image caught out of the corner of your eye that is lost the moment you try to define it.
But, as the sound gradually increases in intensity, as it moves closer, it creates uneasiness in me.
Seeding my brain with just a tiny touch of terror.
My speed increases as the sound grows.
As if there were some danger abroad this night and I might not….make it home.
Off in the distance, I catch a glimpse of a glowing image.
Cracking the sky like lightning on the horizon.

It's coming!

The stories I've heard can't be true.
They're just drug induced, paranoid visions of midnight travelers like me.
Beasts do not prowl the city streets.
This is metro-millennium-civilization.
Deep in the heart of asphalt, stoplights and the 21st Century.
But still, there is something there.
The sound is more distinct now.
A steady, rasping oratory of unintelligible phrases.
Like a lion roaring through clenched teeth.
The glow has evolved into shining yellow orbs pulsating in time to some internal clock strike.

It's coming!

Two blocks down and closing fast.
My eyes dart about looking for escape.
My pace slowing as I consider retreat.
But, something in me is drawn forward.
A thought that I might experience a rare occurrence seen only by a select few.
After all, they survived to tell the tale.
But, how many others have there been that disappeared into that dark night.

It’s coming!

My hesitation has made escape a moot point.
There is no time now.
I duck into a darkened doorway, trying desperately to dissolve into the shadows.
My eyes wide and wild, straining to focus on the beast as it passes.
Its sounds are loud as thunder!
Its movement grinding, like gears grating on steel.
It bristles, scratching at the pavement like the frantic pawing of a mad bull.
Liquid flows in thick sheets from its steaming body.
My ears are filled with the hissing of its heady breath.
The rumbling from its belly sounds as if it were devouring the ground beneath it.
The Beast strains on like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse,
challenged by only the foolhardy
It is Monday and the street cleaner rules the night.

Remote Control

I spend too much time in my brain.
It's an occupational hazard, for writers.
Late nights, when the dogs are crashed and Kate’s asleep.
It's just me and my computer.
Trying to create some twisted vista, for my mind's eye to see.
Occasionally, I pause at the keyboard to allow time for my brain to drink deep of the cosmic chowder that is my creativity.
The heady stuff that sustains my soul and puts the words on the page.
While my subconscious keeps sorting through the files.
My conscious brain slips into neutral.
Casually, without even thinking, I pick up the satellite TV remote and flick through the offerings.

CNN to TNT to HBO to TBS.

I've noticed that sometimes, a certain trance level can be reached and the tube's regurgitations, channel right into cerebral matter.
Forming a direct connection, electrical impulse to passive receiver.
I absorb the power of the tube and find that I am able to create my own TV programming by the digital divining of the cable remote.

PBS to NBC to WGN to CBS.

As the channels pass images flicker across the screen, strobe like, hypnotic.
Partial sentences combining to form an altogether different dialogue.
Cautiously, I journey through the channels.
Slowly at first, unsure, hesitant.
But, gradually gaining confidence, my speed increases.
Feeling more attuned, I begin to adjust the direction of the flow.
First forward, then backward, then forward again.
As I master the meter, the rhythm, a feeling of power nudges my ego.
I become obsessed with my manipulation of the media.

I control the horizontal.
I control the vertical.

This sudden feeling of worth is, overwhelming.
It takes me over the edge and I, tube-out.
Suddenly, I'm careening through the channels, wildly, out of control.

CNN to TNT to HBO to NBC to TBS to CBS to CNN

Madly, up and down the dial, in a suicidal charge.
A veritable tubing frenzy!
Not content with just scanning up and down.
I began to randomly, select.

72 to 39 to 17 to 64.

Finger to the touch-pad, I go for it!
Shocked at my own abandon.
I can feel the tube, sucking at my mind, hungry, cold, indifferent.
But I am powerless to stop the inevitable .
My senses glued to the tube, we become one.
Locked in a psycho/techno embrace.
Violating all sorts of inter-species prohibitions.
Power boosting each other to a channeling climax.
Suddenly, a dog, awakened by the flashing remote, howls, sinks it's teeth into the sweaty touch pad, wrestles it from my grasp and I COME……………
……………………screeching to a halt smack dab in the middle of Larry King.
The TV's back to generating white noise in the background.
I sit frustrated.
Wanting a cigarette, but...not sure I deserve one.

A Wordsmith Archives - Twisted Tales