Will Power

On the one hand, Will would pinch his nose and then with the other he’d strum his lips like banjo strings. He would tear old National Geographic pages into half-inch strips with only the whites of his eyes reflecting the glare of the fluorescent lights, drool hanging off the right side of his stubbly chin like a budding blob, like some anemic, protoplasmic wannabe slinking ever closer to his chewed up pocket protector. He would hum, "Bolero." He would eat the heads of burned matches and wedge Q-tips in the backs of Swiss Cuckoo clocks as he emitted a high-pitched whine on the inhale, playing fast and loose with glottis and uvula. All in all, he was the ultimate case of baskets, full, fruity, off of the pier and into the deep, gone fifty ways past Sunday and growling throatily at the moon.

But now that they were here, he had to try, yes he had to make the effort of all efforts that he was on the beam, not off, that sanity was his and not some thin bamboo broom leaning in the closet. He would put forth a healthy, heavy mental effort, for it was a way out, a way out of this English imprisonment in Bathe. His wish was to be out of Bathe, and into better.

First, he held his breath and smiled, but it seemed like a forced smile, and then he realized that it was merely a smirk, so he showed his teeth, but then he felt like William Wallace picking a fight with those English pricks outside of York, so then he stopped, but now his lips felt dry and so he licked them. Then he pulled in his tongue and had to resist flapping it inside his mouth like some overzealous flagellum looking for cilia. He could not look at them—but he must, he knew that he must and kept insisting he must, so he looked and his eyes felt like they had lead sinkers tied to them attached to fishing line, and that fishing line had a thick hook at the end that was hung up on some submerged stump with big-mouth bass and carp and catfish all milling around in swirls of silt and fishy expectorant stirred up by a lot of gill and fervent fin. But he looked, and they looked back.

And then, he wanted to whine his escape whine, but had to hold back the urge like a bull holds back the ability to deal cards, and, instead, just snorts and digs his hooves into the flocculent clay like some mad-tailed auger-master looking for an accessible aquifer a few millimeters at a time. But Will held it together, yes he did, breathing steadily and digging his thumbnail into the cuticle of his forefinger like some Lilliputian assailant, pointed and panicked and perspicacious, putting forth an urge exceptional and fanatical, as if it were some Roaring Twenties gangster with a gofer named Pinky.

They departed Bathe, and Will exhaled and cocked his head, looking like a broken question mark or some bobble-doll with bent wire, or some overwatered and weighty mum precipitously placed on an emaciated stem in need of bracing sticks to prevent a blooming fall into the soggy dankness of the flower bed. But at least he was out of Bathe.

(Words: 550)