Tag: writing

Amish Tracks (Part 1)

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

Note: This is a WIP. I haven’t shared WIPs in years, but I am hoping that doing so inspires me to keep going and see the thing through to the end. The best comp I can give for this piece (and hope to achieve at the conclusion) is Perks of Being a Wallflower set in a small Iowa town. Please let me know if you have any parts you like, or things you want to see in future sections!

I hand Nick the nearly-spent joint, watching his thin lips puff at the damp butt; I imagine the molecules of our saliva mixing in the paper fibers, against my better judgment.

“Careful, Trent! Squirrel!” shouts Veronica from the back seat.

I swerve just in time to dodge the skittering creature, the neon contents of our Big Gulps – blue raspberry, lime, tropical punch – sloshing from side to side in the cupholders of my ancient Mercury.

“Jesus,” Nick coughs, hacking out a cloud of smoke that quickly vanishes out the window, into the golden-hour light. “I swear they’ve got a death wish. Remember how Mr. Larrabee would say the wildlife around here have scrambled brains because of the chemical runoff from the factories out east? God, I miss that guy.”

“Dude, didn’t he get, like, sent upriver for sexting Jenifer O’Hair? He’s a fucking creep,” says Veronica.

“There’s beauty in the breakdown,” I reply, pointing to the cassette-to-aux converter plugged into the dashboard tinnily playing “Let Go” through the car speakers.

Read More »

No More Quiet Rooms

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

I am naked in front of a mirror, examining myself again. Mid-20s, average build, ungainly to someone in the spotlight but perfectly acceptable for a chef; mine is a body worn by the average everywhere. A softness to the edges, flat yet firm ass. That’s my body, a space I scrutinize way too often, a bad habit I would love to break.

There is classical music playing from the portable speaker on the dresser. I can taste the heartbeat of the timpani and swell of the violins on my spine. I towel off, my inspection complete, and begin to choose clothes for the party. Before a decision is made, Parker makes his entrance, carrying a sack with new hand towels from the store. He follows me as I dip into the walk-in closet, but I pivot at the last second and turn to the dresser instead, throwing on a pair of underwear before considering the outfit further. By the time I’ve thrown on the tightest pants I own, the blackest shirt, and a windbreaker, Parker is already off showering, getting ready for his own evening, apart.

Read More »

The Best of Friends

trentmcmahon2 Comments

The best of friends are glued together on the sofa, wrapped in a mélange of blankets, the blasting AC sprouting goosebumps on their exposed wrists as they pass a joint back and forth, the cold air decreasing their body temperatures, combatting the friction of the undercover exploration.

Ice spins around slowly in plastic cups of pinot grigio, box-poured. Around them, wasted partygoers are shuffling off to bedrooms, to nooks, to crannies, doors locked and clicked and fastened with bangles around the knobs to keep a separation between fact and refrigeration.

Muffled moans, the parting sighs of lips opening, tongues swirling together, the pitch of a pendulum somewhere in the apartment, swinging back and forth—slower and slower—as the two nestle somehow closer, the yellow haze overtaking them, fervent departure from friendship into something more. They melt together, lost to the desires boiling inside them.

Read More »

Planting Season

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

Seed

I would spend hours out among the collection of Arkansas pines that hugged the eastern edge of the property, breathing in their ethereal presence that seemed imbued with a bygone, forbidden magic. Instead of unloading the semi, assembling the dining table and chairs, doing anything to further the idea that you and I were now permanent, stationary creatures trying out that thing called domesticity, out there among the pines I remained, trying to decipher the undiscovered language hidden in the bark patterns, hoping to find the answers, a reason for our new life in the heart of the heart of the country. And though the house would eventually open itself to us, I would—selfishly, I realize now, no matter how much you told me otherwise—pass the time out there while you searched for temp gigs to tide us over until the farm was up and running, contemplating the chaos of the passing weeks, ignoring those to come.

Read More »

Jerusalem

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

The old man always seemed one step away from death. Like the next one would claim him, the reaper mawing at his heels would finally snag a bony ankle and drag him to the underworld. You always thought that it was the strict adherence to routine that kept him alive, as was common with many of the Japanese men you knew from work at the marketplace. Twelve-hour days on his feet allowed for the appearance of togetherness. But watching him closely, as you did, as you could not avoid, you began to notice the wiring starting to loosen. When you saw him in the morning, his first words would fail to materialize—out came only a cough filmed with gruel, some undiscovered mucus that covered his openings like cheesecloth. When he reached low for something, you’d see the stall, the contemplation, as if his joints and muscles were saying, “No. You will not get up from this.”

Today you saw him skittering across the iced parking lot before your shift. His ears latched with muffs, a nude herringbone shawl sarcophagizing his hollowed cheekbones. Oversized khakis flopping around in the breeze, emphasizing the diaper silhouette around his puff-pastry of an ass. Most mornings, though, he would be there well before you arrived, his car parked pell-mell in the tundra of the parking lot. You always wondered why he decided to sleeve his steering wheel in leopard print. Those times he invited you in the car, perhaps after a shift while you both waited for the windows to defrost, you would focus all your thoughts on the steering wheel, trying to shake the image of the mottled hands clutching it. To reach over and peel the cover off, to throw it in a slush puddle, to hide it from him, to burn it to ash. The thoughts circulate without end. Wait patiently. Wait until he leaves the window down or the door unlocked. You will get your chance. You absolutely will.

Read More »

Amigara Mountain

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

Adapted from 阿弥殻断層の怪 (Amigara Dansō no Kai) by Junji Ito

One — The Earthquake

There was a lull in big-ticket news stories that summer, so when the quake hit, the media blitz that ensued seemed a bit excessive at first. It was true that several rural villages and towns, of the few that even remained anymore, were hit with mild setbacks, but no damage had struck the City, where most of the country now called home. Aside from a few crumbling edifices and some broken bones (no reported deaths or missing persons), there wasn’t much else to cover. A destroyed shrine took the top slot for two full news cycles, covered in every angle imaginable—human interest, religious connotations, repair costs, local reactions, the works. At first it seemed that the Amigara Earthquake, named after the mountain that had acted as its epicenter, was simply a natural disaster that underperformed the reputation the media deemed worthy to fabricate around it.

But the news outlets eventually latched themselves onto a potential goldmine of a story—a nerve was struck, the incubus of this whole, strange tale, and the beginning of my involvement in the matter. After the story in question aired, the rest fell into place with ease, as if the pointless rabble, the dry, pastoral filler wasting away the summer, purposefully underperformed the colossal main event that lay waiting in the wings.

I was cramming in a meal between classes, my last two of the term, when the broadcast brass played from the pod on the wall. “Good evening, New Japan. The time is 16:00. We will now present the evening news. Breaking development from the Amigara story…” Great, more of this nonsense. How many ways could they spin this thing? I was halfway across the room to switch the pod to a new channel when my mind processed what they were actually saying. “…natural phenomenon? It seems the shifted fault unveiled a strange pattern. It was first discovered by a passing medical aircraft flying in supplies to nearby villages. The NJB News team has acquired the first known documented footage of the phenomenon, live now from the mountainside. A warning—the following images may be unsettling. Viewer discretion is highly advised.”

***

Read More »

/homeaway/

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

The drive home is a rabies shot, agitated,
you twitch from state line to county line
to places in between,
the coordinates slipstream daydreams —
You remember the road numbers:
145th, 194th
impossibly lengthy, made of pulverized
bonemeal and crunch coat,
those steel-cut graveled byways

You remember the inhabitants
rendered from bacon fat and ham hock
tourniquets and night shift salt licks
Or those pubertied boys and their
percussion kits behind the old band shell,
blasting canonfire flams back there
on Thursday nights, before the
sweating, stinking performance

of pops classics, patriotica,
the flags swatting the air,
or was that the yellowed sheet
music, free from clothespin
bondage?

Read More »

The Blood Moon

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

I dreamt in arpeggios the night of the blood moon. The world became an overfull glass of red wine under its infrared glare. Plants in my windows, muted to grey, alien tentacles tickling the panes in the inverted light, shivered, their roots tightening in suspense of the claret nightmare the blood moon bore.

A paragraph away, I found myself stretched to fit the countryside, pores sprouting newborn life, eyes, large as the craters of the clotted moon, pools of gelatin, ecosystems revolving around demonic nuclei. Ropes of eternity clasped around me like lover’s hands, burning bonds into my skin until there was no telling lariat from dermis.

My molten heart cried out in anguish, Please, let there be more! as tectonic plates slid together to applause the soliloquy. The earth seized, tides defied gravity, stretching up toward the heavens in a twisted braid. My pillow became damp, then the sheets, the liquid crimson, warm sex. Onward, onward into the hematic night, entire universes nestled into my teardrops.

Come morning, come night, the music of the dreamworld tinged with bittersweet recollection, I woke, scarred by the wound of time, by the blood moon unhung, inside me.

*

Photo credit: “Total Lunar Eclipse” by GSFC, licensed under CC by 2.0. 

Reminders

trentmcmahonLeave a comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

1.

It would be a lie to say that I didn’t know the dead man, but it would be the truth to say I can no longer remember his name. Too many nights filled with foreign smoke and strong drink. Too many days scratched away listlessly. But I know it’s still down inside me somewhere, being chewed up and digested again and again.

It’s been buried so many times, on the tip of my tongue in the pitch of nightfall, but never fully exposed. Maybe it will surface one day, as these things often do, when least expected.

I have wondered why I forgot the name. Before his death he was someone I saw a lot—you couldn’t say I knew him, but he was definitely a constant. We worked at the market for a couple months anyway. A friend of mine said it best over drinks, as we sat next to a shelf of nameless corporate nobodies at some long-forgotten bar in the legal district: it’s easier to forget a face that wants forgotten, he said. That was at least five years ago—my dog didn’t get hit by the bus yet, we had a president worth having, I had more hair. My god. What is five years but an endless and terrifying chasm that has the potential so suck away your very lifeblood?

Both he and the dead man now share a common denominator: both absent from my life.

Read More »