Dave Press

A Daddy Long-Legs to be exact, and the child inside reminded me to not destroy it by washing it down the drain, even thought it was near my shampoo and body wash. It’s bad luck to kill a Daddy Long-Legs, the kid said. 

“Yes,” said the Long Legs, “it is bad luck, and you need all the luck you can get.” 

“You’re speaking from my negative attitude,” I said to the Daddy. “You’re accentuating my negativity by talking for it, making me believe that I do need all the luck I can get.”

“Shut up,” said the spider. “You’re self-actualizing by making it real, convincing yourself. I’m just calling it like it is.”

“I should wash you down the drain.”

“You know what will happen if you do.”

Yesterday morning a cop and three stooges come into the room to go to work on the door. They bang on the door saying Hello?! Hello?! Nada. The Secretary considers that maybe there’s a person who has been locked in there all weekend. Maybe this person is unconscious or dead, she says out loud because she’s funny and says stuff like that all the time. I say, Nah, if there was someone dead in there we would smell it by now—it’s been over 24 hours. Really? Do you know that? She asks in her South Georgia accent. No, but I’ve read plenty of Donald Westlake books to assume it. Five more people carrying all manner of destructive apparatus enter our little office and go to work on the door. In an hour, I hear a drill, a chainsaw, something that sounds like Johnny 5, and finally the application of a Jaws of Life to open this bathroom door. This is when all the people who were working on the door died. Who can say of what, but I heard a cough—just one cough—followed by the sound of people collapsing. When I went around the corner to see if they were done, they were all on the floor. Like somebody gunned down the Village People they were dead and the bathroom was empty. 

Last night I woke suddenly at 5am. Just up and wide awake.  This is what I wrote:

Can’t sleep, just had a half awake dream of Leighton Meister, Ed Westick, and Blake Lively from Gossip Girl having an all out Super Soaker fight but instead of water in the tubes it was battery acid. Ok, head pillow.

Arches up above us reflecting the stars in the sky and the swimmers. The criss-crossed sections of the skylight show the four of us while we do our little patterns across the short length of the pool. There is a couple—of course—secretly wishing me and the other guy to leave the pool so they can fornicate. The other guy in the pool looks at everyone sideways, terrified.  When I went into the elevator the couple was already in there, when the three of us entered the pool the terrified guy gave us a look like we just caught him doing something.

It’s funny, looking up at the skylight while I do my elementary backstroke, how people swim. For the couple, it’s foreplay; for the terrified guy, it’s something else, probably just the fact that he was disturbed from his alone time with the pool; for me, it’s therapy.  Swimming has always been the one function that allows me to clear my head, to get out of my own brain for a little while, but not this time.  This time I do my elementary backstroke and look up through the skylight and think about swimming through the sky and what tomorrow will be like, if it’ll be better than today.