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I didn’t write a word of these lies but that hardly matters. The words happen to exist. I happen to have existed. It is what it is.
I was born on a Ferris wheel just outside of Freeport, Kansas. My mother hadn’t known she was pregnant before she went into labor. By pure coincidence she was at a carnival. She could just as easily have been somewhere else. My twin popped out first. He wasn’t long for this world. He careened to the pavement below. His weak and vulnerable body splattered like ripe fruit. Only moments later, I emerged.
My mother described me as being smaller than my elder brother. She said that I squirmed in her arms. She told me that she had wanted to simply drop me but chose not to out of love. I doubt there was any love for me even then. My birth was a chaotic event within a chaotic universe. My survival was just the flip of a coin. It’s all random probabilities in the end.
My father was never around. My mother claimed both I, and my deceased brother, had been virgin births, but that doesn’t sound particularly likely to me. Maybe she was impregnated by green slimy aliens from across the stars. That seems a reasonable enough explanation. The odds of our species being truly alone in this universe are laughable to say the least.
I was eighteen when I bought the lottery ticket. I used a bit of birthday money my uncle Chuck gave me, to buy a five-dollar scratcher. I won fifteen thousand dollars. That wasn’t enough to make me rich of course, but the feeling of holding that flimsy piece of paper in my hand was almost divine.
I showed the ticket to my mother. We were sitting on the front porch swing. She was smoking a cigarette. I told her maybe we could take a trip together with some of the money. She did always love the beach. She dropped the cigarette. It burned a hole through her left house slipper. She didn’t move. The sudden surprise of winning the money had killed her. Almost every penny ended up going to paying for her funeral.
Tiny and massive improbable events have stalked me all my life. I’ve developed numerous unusual or new diseases, afflictions, and disorders. I’ve been stabbed by prominent serial killers and assassins. I’ve been struck by lightning while going to get my mail on four separate occasions. There’s never any rhyme or reason. Bad things just happen. Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s his absence.
I was twenty-five when I became trapped within a concrete wall. A friend who’s a college professor explained to me how it happened after the fact. If I’m being honest, I’ve never fully been able to understand what she said, but I’ll try and explain anyway.
Essentially we are all just little particles buzzing around at random. So is everything around us. That’s pretty basic science. Well, if you were to walk at a wall for eternity, eventually things would line up just right and you’d walk right through like some sort of ghost. It’s just the extreme improbability that keeps that from happening.
I was just walking to work when I tripped on a rare Italian coin. I happened to fall face-first into a concrete wall surrounding a unicycle factory. Normally that might lead to a bump on the head, but I’m me so I slipped right on through the hard exterior of the wall. All at once I was in total and complete darkness. I could not move or speak. Only my nose protruded from the structure which imprisoned me.
I would have screamed if I’d been able to. Instead, I tried to focus on my breathing. I inhaled the cool late September air in through my nostrils. Then I expelled it. I did this again and again for many hours. I was only freed when a factory worker leaving for home happened to spot a bit of snot dripping from my nose. Firefighters came and busted up the concrete with a couple of sledgehammers. I was asked what had happened and was naturally unable to provide anything resembling a reasonable answer. Ultimately I was fined for damage to private property. That’s better than dying like that I suppose.
Speaking of death; I died this morning. It really wasn’t anything fancy or special. I was old. It was my time, all things considered. I fell asleep at the desk in my study. My cat was on my lap. Maybe little Waylon will end up eating me. That’s alright. As I dreamed about enormous dominos crashing into one another infinitely, my heart went and gave out. Just like that, the continual nonsense of my life was over. The rest of eternity would surely be easier.
My head had been perched in my hand. This was a technique I had learned in school. I had originally employed it so that I could sleep in class unnoticed. When I died my arm went limp and my head collided with the keyboard of my desktop. My body spasmed as nerves fired arbitrarily. My nose and chin banged into keys at random. Without any purpose or desire, my inanimate corpse produced the words you’re reading now. In the end, my story was told for me. Life is just random letters we try to make sense out of.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Born in West Virginia, Matthew J. Gleason now lives in the space between realities. They grew up loving horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Diagnosed with autism at a young age Matthew has always related most strongly to aliens and monsters. Their novella When Vampires Attack! as well as their collection series Strange Phenomena is available on Amazon. Their work has been included in Horror Sleaze Trash, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Unstamatic and The Sirens Call ezine among other publications. Outside of writing, they enjoy chess, cooking, and acquiring tattooed skin. You can find updates about Matthew’s writing on the Facebook page “Matthew J. Gleason Writer” as well as the Twitter account of the same name.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Cruel Numbers”:
From its intriguing opening (if a bit gory) to its unexpected ending, author Matthew Gleason’s piece delights us with interesting questions. Being trapped in a concrete wall made for amusing speculation. And doing this in under a thousand words is what makes for great flash fiction.