Palm's of His Hands

"I used to be like you. Young, idealistic, wanting nothing more than
to have a good time. I used to hate all those boring administrators of
order in their suits and ties. Working day and night to secure my
bondage. I know what goes on - but I'm not like you anyone. No, no. You
soon realise to take what you can and accept what's here."
He sat on his little throne, legs crossed, hands clasped together -
his bald head shining brightly like a regal crown. Small eyes, encased
in big deep lines of authority, webbed in leather like the palms of his
hands, stared at me sharply. His whole face was like the palms of his
hands now.
"You can't change it you know. Not a bit of it. I swear - look around
you fool! Shit happens. That's all you can say and all you can do -
just get on with it!"
Just get on with it! Ha! I bet that's what you did you crazy old
bastard. You got on with it. IT. That's what you all did.
"You're looking at me that way again. I can see it in the way your
lips move without you saying anything. I've been trained you know,
trained to see the signs. All those years in the University of Life
teaches you afew things. Look - you're doing it right now and you don't
even know! I bet you can feel it though. In your eyes."
He was right - fire was smouldering deep inside me, the flames were
licking up, scorching my veins, reaching for my eyes so as to escape
into the world.
"You've got no choice - it has to be this way."
No choice!!! The fires sucked into a single point and then bubbled
into overwhelming radiance of anger and power. No choice!
I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, easily traversing his throne
of rubbish before he could scramble his way away.
"I will no longer do your bidding old man - just look at the world you
have created!"
I stared out across the endless dustbin farms. Dirty creatures - my
fellow creatures - scurried over the dirt green and brown patchwork.
Some hand their heads buried in it - sniffing, always sniffing for that
morsel of food. It was an autumn scene, filled with autumn colours, but
there were no dead leaves floating around or acorn laden trees to
admire. The greens and the browns were the leftover debree of a bygone
age.
He knew what I was thinking.
"It was some party though. Jesus Christ was it some party. Can you
imagine the size of a party so huge that we'll never get it cleaned up?
Ha ha ha!!"
"Don't bait me - you never know. One day I'll kill you. I dream about
it sometimes you know. Breaking your scrawny little neck into shattered
pieces"
"I bet you do. But you're too sane to kill me - you've got too much of
that good in you. It will be your undoing one day."
I wanted to show him differently. To make him fear me and my
dissatisfaction, my hatred with his lot. I lofted him higher into the
air to show him I was serious. I tightened my squeeze around his neck,
pushing my fingers into his leathery skin. But I knew he was right
again. The bastard!!
"What the hells the point of having a party you can never clean up,
huh? What's the fucking point?!"
"I can't talk with you like this, put me down right now or I'll call
someone over and you'll be castrated. Do it now!"
Fearing castration above all else, I put him down, but made sure his
scrawny behind felt the force of the decades old tyre that was his
pathetic little throne.
"The point is - we had a fucking good time! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!"
His laugh irritated my ears as if he had scratched a blackboard - his
masculine voice sounding more and more like a cackle every day.
"You had a good time - what about me?"
"Tough luck sunshine."
And that was that. There was nothing more he could say and there was
nothing more I could do. His bloody generation got the party and mine
got the mop up job. They had got to ravage round the earth, squandering
everything they found, swapping this and that, riding around in
luxurious monsters that ran on poisonous gasses, eating all they wanted
and chucking away the rest, making love every night and creating
billions of children in the process, and what did we get from that? A
pat on the back - "there, there never mind?. We weren't thinking, just
enjoying life?. It seemed like progress at the time?. We went to the
stars. Just think of that."
"Yea yea old man I know the story. I'll get back to work too. But just
look at this dump why don't you sometime - look properly. I think you
live in a dream world sometimes."
I went back down to the rubbish fields. Fucking hell! It was the smell
I hated most. Can you imagine what a thousand-mile wide rubbish dump
that's been rotting for fifty years smells like? I don't suppose you
can, and I hope you never have to.