Orbit (535 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.92 on 27 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by ghola (View user info) at 2009-08-02 17:02:13 EDT
My grandma swears she is a planet. She says she swallows up rooms. She told me her dog crawled under the sofa to get away, but he got swallowed up anyway. Sometimes people kill themselves to avoid being sucked into her orbit. She takes pride in it. Says she eats them if she's hungry. She's lived in a special facility since I was ten years old.
Before I go to visit her, I soak in a vinegar bath. Then I smear mustard and hot sauce over my skin and hair. She told me this would remind her not to eat me.
She asks me to run in circles around her. Says it's distracting if I sit in one place. While I'm running around her, I dislodge a kid from her orbit. The kid sits crying in the corner, probably because I kicked him too hard. He reaches out, grabs a sheet that swirling around my grandma, and wraps it around himself, partially covering his face.
I tell grandma I'm getting tired and she nods at the door. On my way out, I scoop up the kid, balancing him on one hip so I can open the door with the other hand. Walking down the hallway I ask him, "Where are you parents?"
He nods back toward the room and I get it. Stuck in the orbit.
"You want a snack?" I ask him.
He says yeah and I dig in my pocket for change. All I have is some pocket lint and a dry piece of macaroni. I give him the pocket lint and go outside. People run in circles around the building. Some of them aren't really running. They're walking, but swinging their arms hard and sweating like they're running.
I visit my grandma once a week, mostly on Sundays, but I don't stay long. The circles make me dizzy. On the drive home I think about how she was when I was a kid. I mean, I see that it was dangerous for her to live around so many people, but she wasn't malicious. Every morning she stood at the bottom of the hall staircase and I sprayed her with Static Cling while she spun in circles. She said Static Cling would save lives. People wouldn't be sucked into her orbit. She sprayed me too. She called it preventative.
We would take walks around the neighborhood. When squirrels starting falling out of trees and rolling toward us, we knew the static cling had worn off. She would ask me to run in circles around her and I would. When we got home I would go inside, get a trash bag and come back out to gather all the dead squirrels. I didn't want my parents to see. They already called her eccentric. They said eccentric like they really meant dangerous or bad.
Grandma and I would sit on the floor in my bedroom, though my mother said grandmother ought to sit in a chair or on the bed. She said grandmother was too old to sit on the floor. We sat in the floor anyway. We pressed our palms together and held them there until they were sweaty. Then we leaned forward and rested our foreheads against each other until they were sweaty too. Grandma said it made her feel less tired. The same way she felt when I ran in circles around her.
One evening, Dad found a bag of squirrels in the trashcan. He brought them inside, threw them on the kitchen floor and yelled, "What is this?" One of the squirrels fell out of the bag and he pointed to it. Dead creature, no blood, no wound. With glossy eyes, it stared at everything.
Grandma was asleep, but she woke up and came to the kitchen. She stood there in an oversized t-shirt, kind of like the ones I slept in.
"What is this?" Dad asked again, looking at Grandmother and pointing at the squirrel.
She didn't answer. Just went back to bed. Dad sent me to bed too. He came and shut my bedroom door and told me not to leave my room until it was light outside.
The next day they took Grandma to the facility. I woke up and she was gone. Everyone was gone. I made myself a sandwich and sat on the front porch, watching for them.
They didn't come home until that evening and they didn't bring Grandma. No one explained where Grandma was and I didn't understand until years later when they took me to visit her. After that first visit, they took me to see her once a year, on her birthday. When I turned eighteen and moved out of the house, I began visiting her once a week.
We didn't talk during our visits. I ran in circles around her and she sat quietly, her eyes half closed and her lips parted, a bit of drool collecting in the corners.
***
It's different the week that I break my leg. I fall down two flights of stairs at work. It's not just my leg. I break a couple ribs, bust my nose and black one of my eyes. Work tells me to take a few weeks off and then their lawyer calls me, saying he wants to settle. I say yes and sign some papers and decide I don't have to work for a year or two.
I go to the facility a few days late that week. I'm worried. With the broken leg, I'm not sure how things will work.
I walk into her room and sit on the bed next to her. She looks at me, looks at my leg and closes her eyes for a moment. She's processing it, I can tell.
She leans toward me and I lean toward her until our temples touch. We sit that way, getting sweaty, until visiting hours are over. A nurse comes to tell me to leave and I do. In the hall, people stare at me. My face feels swollen and I worry that I have some internal bleeding or some other problem that can't be seen. I touch my face, but my fingers are swollen too. Plump like sausages.
Pictures begin to fall off the walls and I run. I run outside and fumble with my keys, but before I can unlock the car, it begins to slide around me, dragging on the pavement. Other cars start to shift and slide toward me. Someone is screaming. I am screaming. I cover my eyes.
When I open my eyes, grandma is walking around me. Not running, but walking and pumping her arms to gain momentum.
I relax, sit down on the ground and watch her.
User Reviews
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2009-08-22 04:39:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ebenezer_Spooge (user info) at 2009-08-05 10:10:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2009-08-04 11:05:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm not reading this at all. I'll just base my rating on your meatloaf cake.
Submitted by cheerios (user info) at 2009-08-03 20:02:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
YEA SORRY, DIDNT MAKE IT THROUGH.
Submitted by YourNameHere (user info) at 2009-08-03 19:43:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2009-08-03 16:18:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Technically competent, but reminds me of the sort of "look how adorably quirky I am and how far I can carry this wacky strem of conciousness" thing you'd read in a high school comp course. Probably eccentric for high school, but not really that far beyond the norm.
This guy knows his stuff!
Ask him about the squirtguns.
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2009-08-03 16:18:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Technically competent, but reminds me of the sort of "look how adorably quirky I am and how far I can carry this wacky strem of conciousness" thing you'd read in a high school comp course. Probably eccentric for high school, but not really that far beyond the norm.
Submitted by firefly (user info) at 2009-08-03 14:23:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2009-08-03 12:01:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
all is full of love.
Submitted by The_Drake (user info) at 2009-08-03 11:52:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i hate you.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2009-08-03 10:54:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
At first, I didn't think I was going to like this at all, but I liked what you did with it. Good weird.
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2009-08-03 08:47:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Ghola, I really enjoyed this.
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-08-03 07:41:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is why you hate fat people?
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2009-08-03 07:13:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
so wait...now you're fat and grandma is not?
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2009-08-03 05:37:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Really liked this. Started off appearing to be just another random thing but came together nicely toward the middle. Good read.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2009-08-03 05:15:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice. A bit avant garde, but what can you do?
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-08-03 04:18:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
you have the shittiest tattoo i have ever seen
Submitted by PlatinumScarecrow (user info) at 2009-08-02 23:53:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Randomness is NOT desirable. Have a nice day!
Submitted by pandora (user info) at 2009-08-02 23:23:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2009-08-02 20:07:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
What I liked about this was the way the person did that thing with the other stuff.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2009-08-02 20:05:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
meh
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2009-08-02 20:04:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good gad.
Submitted by retrospect (user info) at 2009-08-02 19:55:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i thought this was gonna be about that weird hole they saw in venus :(
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2009-08-02 19:19:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus fuck, you're a weird chick.
This was a great little story.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2009-08-02 18:10:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by forthewin (user info) at 2009-08-02 18:02:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
One of the best things about a good work of fiction is when the writer can convince you that physics work in a way in which they might actually apply to a the bizarre story they present.
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thanks. will work on it.
Submitted by forthewin (user info) at 2009-08-02 18:02:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
One of the best things about a good work of fiction is when the writer can convince you that physics work in a way in which they might actually apply to a the bizarre story they present.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2009-08-02 17:46:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Sgt Hartman and Scourge and Skrap would definitely qualify as planets. . . .
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2009-08-02 17:26:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Woo! Found some pluck to post some writing.