“What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” It’s my wife on the phone. I hang up.
Downstairs, I burn the toast, and then I burn the toaster. The car slips from the driveway into the tundra. At the end of the street, John from 4684 waves my window down. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
“Going to work, John.” He’s watering his lawn. He’s soaking the snow. He’s in his slippers and shorts, and his robe is flying about in a wind spat by snowmen.
I get to the coffee shop. “Venti bold. Room for milk.”
Linda V takes my plastic. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” she asks, as she hands me the cup.
“How do you know my name?”
She crosses her arms. She adjusts her uniform. Then she spits an epitaph at the ceiling, as though she is talking to God through her knowledge of my name, the illicit understanding that I would come into her life to not answer a question that she has been saving, saving since she was born and grew so skinny but ran so fast, into a waif, a delicacy, a girl who serves coffee in exchange for plastic. I ask her again. I ask her again. I ask her again.
I take my designated parking spot at work. Lacey the Secretary hands me a folder. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
“You have my calendar… I don’t understand the question.”
“What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
And on the way to my office, Sandy of Spells and Sequins reaches over the printer and catches my eye, but she’s mute, she’s silent, she’s never said a word to me or anyone else, never will and never wants to. Blue eyes like flapping wings cackle as she hands me a piece of paper, and there it is as though it’s always been, hardened into letters that I can’t put away or spin into something else: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” Blue eyes watch me without saying a thing.
In the office, the phone rings. It’s Bose from Delhi. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
“Nothing. What do you want.” But he’s just breathing. Breathing. Here’s a man. A singular being made of celluloid, a bringer of profit at any cost, the type of man that you forgive any disgression because he is going to make you rich, and then make you believe that it is okay that he did so.
He keeps asking me. Keeps asking me, and I tell him, “nothing” as though that is my name and I am reminding him of who I am. He’s gone like he came: with a breath, a sneer, a click.
The phone rings again. It’s Joe from accounting. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
I hang up. I close the door. I turn off the phone and the computer, and I read a three hundred page report, because this is the thing that I was born for, the sitting here and now, the being in this place, to read about the rape and pillaging of our earth by heartless bandits who are going to see it turned into dust – this is what I, Lloyd, had before me as a destiny when I was born 46 years ago. This is it. Right here. Right here. But fifty pages in, the words blur, they shift and backpedal, losing their meaning as they whisper that they have no stature over sanity, no power but that which we carefully take away from them to protect our legal interests. “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” they ask me, next paragraph over. Then again the next page. Then in a figure caption. A table title. Then every line. Every sentence. Every thing, every everything, every blighted moment or risen one, every denuded spot where my eyes flit.
I turn off the lights. Someone already did that. I pace around the desk. Someone is already doing that. Turn up the heat, because this is getting cold, this is getting strange, and there is no coming back from this.
The doctor’s office answering machine: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” My wife’s voice mail: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” The 911 operator: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” The last thing I remember my dad saying to me before he passed away: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” The word of God, the utterance divine that comes from the worn pages of a soiled, sad book: “What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
I close my eyes. I breathe. And then the day is gone, and people are gone, and I am on my way home. The radio asks the question; so does a stop sign; so does a billboard. I park the car in the garage, don’t get out until the door closes. The labels on the windshield washer fluid ask me it. So do the instructions for the recycle bin. And the label on the bottle of vodka: it asks me in fifteen neat rows, each one getting smaller and smaller as though this is a test not just of my sanity, but of my mortal soul.
The world spins. It blurs. This is an untruth. This is a fallacy. This is a construct cobbled together by expectations, by realities, by pressures that exert themselves without surcease, doing the bidding of people who are not me, never were, that I never wanted to admit into my life except that somehow they managed the trick anyway, finding that opening or temptation, that weakness and vulnerability that whispered to me of the things that I must have – and now do. This is a treatise of impossibility, a drunkenness instead of existence. A potion. A spell. Everything I didn’t want.
In bed, the ceiling spins. My wife comes home. She undresses, puts her head on a pillow. “Are you okay?”
“I am.”
“How much did you drink?”
“How much didn’t I drink?”
She finds that funny, and kisses me. “Are you going to take that off now?”
“Take what off?”
“The words on your forehead.”
“There are no words on my forehead.”
“What are you going to do today, Lloyd?”
I go to the mirror. The words are there. They are etched deep into my skin in my own handwriting. There is not enough surfactant in the world to get them off. “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.”
“Who did it then?”
Under the covers, I get closer to her. “They did. Them.”
“They did everything, didn’t they, honey?”
I nod. Here is a sleep I can trust. Here is a dream that I can handle. “Lloyd,” she breathes next to me.
“Lloyd.”
“Lloyd?”
“What?” I ask her.
“Lloyd, I want to know…”
“No.”
“Lloyd, listen…”
“Not that.”
“I just want to talk…”
“I can’t.”
“I just want to ask…”
“Please don’t.”
I turn over and fall away. There is a dreamtime beyond the edge of this metropolis, where the lights of the city are just enough to brighten the dark damaged forest that lies beyond. I walk through mist and heather.
I’m there, and here. I’m you, and me. I’m dreaming, and gone. One breath, I don’t know which, comes so hard that I choke on the embers of it. The room is dark. The room is cold. I’m awake.
I stumble to the bathroom. Turn on the light. It would be easy to look away. It would be easy to keep my eyes shut. It would be so easy to believe that I live in this dream, and that the abstraction of everyday life hasn’t overwhelmed me. But instead, I put my head close to the mirror, to make sure I can read the words properly. Because there are words there, letters written by my hand across the flesh of my forehead, letters culled from the deep dreamtime itself, simple words that I must have kept hidden in my pocket, because I don’t recognize them at all:
“What are you going to do tomorrow, Lloyd?”
I just loved this!
I wish I did.
Very powerful Trend!
Why thank you Elyse.
Good God. Lloyd makes me want to jump out of my skin! I’m Lloyd, looking in the mirror, scared shitless…is this what losing one’s mind looks like?
I think it might be, Southern Belle. The things we do to ourselves…
Or…the things we DON’T….he’s missed a few things he coulda/shoulda to stop the madness in its tracks…thank God for hobbies. Just sayin’!
He should bail, if he knows what’s good for him. But people get stuck in a track, and that’s that.
They do get stuck…but that’s NOT that!
Never too late NB
look at me
53
finally free
to be me
why?
c.h.a.n.g.e.
something
anything
one thing
just
c.h.a.n.g.e.
(I know I know…it’s a storeeeee….but…also a good lesson here NB)
We love and need tales of redemption and escape. But there are so few who make it. You are a great example – change is good.
Thanks 🙂
What are you going to post today, Trent?
Are you spying on me, Doobster?
An everyman nightmare. It started off with the essence of David Lynch and segued into The Twilight Zone. That’s a might tasty stew simmering on the stove. Poor Lloyd. Lloyd is all of us.
He’s definitely in me.
I recognize this feeling – am I crazy? What am I going to do today?
You’re not crazy. If you were crazy, you wouldn’t recognize the craziness in this.
Christ. This as a video would be unbelievably eery. Also, I have that exact skull bottle in my liquor cabinet, and now I’m nervous about going home…
Never be nervous about good vodka, Jennie. I recommend shooting it straight.
Blech. I can only do that with bourbon.
Ugh, bourbon… and now I got to try some. Never been one of my favorites but I haven’t really given it a chance.
It has such creepy, dark undertones… but there is a weird humor to it also… II love the way you do that with words. And the description of the celluloid man was awesome…
Dude, thanks. I do honestly go for creepy. I don’t know why. I wish I did.
well that worked out well then
Suck it up, buttercup.
buck it up, suckercup
I had a weird vision of a toilet plunger attached to some guy’s forehead.
I have a story about that… sort of
Let’s hear it.
I had a toy that Jess played with as a baby, a rattle with a big suction cup at one end. You could stick it to something and they could smack it around. I thought it would be funny to suction it to my forehead and let her play with it. When I took it off 10 minutes later I had a round hickey the size of a small tea saucer on my forehead… for days… I told people I was the victim of a drive by sledgehammering.
Blog post! I wanna see pictures! Or cartoons – something.
They are old style real photos… I have to hunt through some big boxes.
Yikes, this sort of gave me anxiety. Which is a compliment, because it was incredibly well written and captures a lifestyle of exhausting worry and questioning that many of us have lived or are living. Curious– how long was this stewing in your head before you wrote it out?
I don’t really know. I do most of my writing in the early morning before work, after a couple of stiff espressos. I usually wake up groggy, don’t really know what I’m going to write about. Sit down and start writing, and out something comes. I suspect this one has more to do with my personal life than most of my stories, though, so to answer your question – it’s probably been ruminating about in my subconscious for a while.
I’m impressed that you can wake up early enough to do anything other than scramble to work but especially that you’re capable of writing. I produce only drivel in the AM hours.
This is interesting.
I wasn’t this way in school; it was the opposite. But my kids have forced me to economize time at night to be with them, so mornings, very early mornings at times, are my best time to write now.
I was equally surprised the day i learnt that as well. He does it at times between buckets of coffee, drums of pure ethanol and children running the house over… A weird artist turned on by weird things.
Hahaha! Sounds like something to aspire to!
I am afraid it sounds so.
Ah Doc, you disappear for such extended periods, but I’m always so happy when you come back. Give me some poetry, figure I need it. Give us some of yours; your many friends need that greatly. Would fit well with the caffeine and the ethanol. I made some ethanol the other day, by the way, from pulp and paper effluent… true story. I was a bit shocked, and mostly resisted trying the stuff… mostly.
Glad to be back too.
Humbled you, of all people, would demand for my poetry.
That’s a joke, right? Your insanity is quite adventurous.
My insanity is never in question, and at the very least, it’s of high quality. And it demands real poetry, sir!
Ha! Top connoisseur quality.
Just fantastic…blown away as always…if I may.
“… and grew so skinny but ran so fast, into a waif, a delicacy, a girl who serves coffee in exchange for plastic.”
And
“Blue eyes like flapping wings cackle…”
Great descriptive lines!
Thank you Frank – really appreciate that.
Are you saying I was Frank, I am Frank, or jes re-branding me as Frank? “Cause I might need the re-branding…
Dude, I have no idea. Can I just blame the alcohol? The tiredness? Or maybe I am starting to lose it… it’s possible… very possible…
De nada, I never list my name (that I know of, might have…I lost mine long ago lol) so Frank’s as good as any to me…
N actually I thought you’d stumbled on some uploaded videos for another of my blogs and were subtly referencing them…
I’m just gonna call you Frank now.
Well done. Gripping. Powerful. Painful… *insert other words here* And finish off with: You are quite talented.
And you are very kind. Figure this story is some variant of my life. Not my life, to be sure, but could have been, and sometimes is.
Stop asking yourself the tough questions… nobody else seems to these days.
Or, instead of putting the question on your forehead, put an answer instead: breathe, enjoy, smile. Keep it simple and it can still be every bit as inspirational. Right?
Ah, see, you are a philosopher. And that’s dangerous. You will start to think and go in circles; and you will end up meeting yourself.
Answers are like geese: you hate to step in their shit, and when you really need them, they’ve flown south for the winter.
I’ve sat next to Lloyd in many a bar.
I think I’ve bought him a drink, and vice versa.
That was awesome! I was on the edge of nothingness trying to take hold of something. All over the place and settled in comfortably. Your writing is vivid and imaginative all of which I’m sure you”ve heard before. I really loved that.
Glad you liked it – all over the place is my speciality!
Well! I am properly freaked out. I will be checking my forehead before I hit the Scotch (my choice).
Scotch is my choice too, honestly.
You would think that Art was the only idiot that stuck that suction cup toy to his forehead but nope – my kid’s dad did it too. Men are awesome in their lack of intelligence.
Never have truer words been spoken. Yes, men are dumb, especially around plungers.
W-w-w-wow! Trent! First of all, let me say I loved this storyl Lloyd’s mental state reminds me of childbirth. There’s no way out, there’s nothing anybody can do and you’re a hair away from going completely ape shit. Yet just when you think he’s finally made it through to the other side— it’s on his forehead! Noooo! And oh the underlying horror of the repetition!
On a lighter note I think Linda V read Lloyd’s name tag.
and my new favorite quote:
Answers are like geese: you hate to step in their shit, and when you really need them, they’ve flown south for the winter. -Trent Lewin
Reminds me of childbirth… not what I was going for, but I will totally take that compliment, because it was meant to be a bit destabilizing.
I’m glad you noticed the Linda V bit, I work in names here and there of people, so that one was for you. Yes, she knew because it was on his forehead, but he just didn’t get it. Didn’t realize.
I totally made that quote up on the spot! If you ever hear or read it used anywhere else, tell them credit to me!
That’s what I love about your writing. You see things differently without trying to be different and then you have the ability to pull it altogether so it really works. And I’m so glad I made it into your story — even if I was clocked in for an hour and have yet to see hide nor hair of my Starbuck’s pay check..
yeah, sorry about the paycheque thing…
One thing stuck, and I want to understand it better:
“Then she spits an epitaph at the ceiling…”
In memoriam of Lloyd? Is he dead already? I feel like it could work that way. 9th circle of hell, where the lawns are frozen, but your idiot neighbor waters them anyway. Where not just the toast, but the toaster is burnt.
Or did you mean ‘epithet’?
I am slowly working my way through your work, because I like the taste of it. Certain passages are meant for the tongue, Lewin, and yours have a book-flavor. A written-flavor. It translates well to speaking. I had to ask about this one word, because I couldn’t swallow it like the rest.
I think he’s dying, and she knows it. This kind of bombast, this forwards progression in a world of nothing, of paper and paperclips, just leads to death. At least I’m convinced of it. So is she, poor little waifish barista that she might be, with this little insight. This wisdom. She serves me coffee all the time. I wonder what she sees.
Don’t read all my stuff, Jones, some of it is just purely for fun and is in the moment, but I’ve forgotten it already. You don’t have to listen to my preferences, certainly, but these are the stories of which I’m most proud:
http://trentlewin.com/2014/01/20/the-brume-on-the-far-off-land/
http://trentlewin.com/2013/12/19/carly-of-fourteen-years/
http://trentlewin.com/2013/10/17/toronto-rain-a-short-story-that-isnt/
http://trentlewin.com/2013/09/14/things-that-floated-away-in-the-flood/
http://trentlewin.com/2013/07/20/little-things-a-short-story-with-no-twist/
http://trentlewin.com/2013/07/15/cavegirl/
http://trentlewin.com/2012/12/15/burst-both-look-home-2/
http://trentlewin.com/2012/10/24/burst-plenty/
I figure one of these days, I’m going to blow up with this stuff. Just erupt with everything that never has time to get out, cause I’m drinking coffee and working in this shit. This absolute shit that means nothing, is nothing, goes no where. I will write a book; I am almost done. I will write stories that touch greatness. I will.
You will, Lewin. Because you do. Keep at it. Keep with me. Write more. Show me.
This has to work both ways, Jones.
I’ve put up Return 4, The Girl Who Would See, and there’ another slated for either today or tomorrow, and more to come.
You with me?
I’ll be there. Running about with little monsters, everywhere. Today it was pirate ships and sunken treasure; tomorrow, sledding down mountains. Anxious to read what you’ve written.
“What are you going to do today, Lloyd?” It’s my wife on the phone. I hang up.
Downstairs, I burn the toast, and then I burn the toaster.
You always know how to start with a bang! It’s admirable/incredible/I can learn a lot from you sir Trent of Canada pass the syrup?
We have like drums of syrup here… you can have as much as you want, you just have to visit, cause it’s hell getting this stuff across the border.
Chris, what are you going to do with these words: “The world spins. It blurs. This is an untruth. This is a fallacy. This is a construct cobbled together by expectations, by realities, by pressures that exert themselves without surcease, doing the bidding of people who are not me, never were, that I never wanted to admit into my life except that somehow they managed the trick anyway, finding that opening or temptation, that weakness and vulnerability that whispered to me of the things that I must have – and now do. This is a treatise of impossibility, a drunkenness instead of existence. A potion. A spell. Everything I didn’t want”?
This was good, Trent.
A good pickup in the middle and a fantastic finish. Drove the message home. Yeah, the question is there alright! On the forehead.
Thanks Doc. What is written on your forehead these days? We don’t hear from you, and thus I must ask.
Matters of the reality and verifiability of things unseen. I have posts, but I still have one or two more bloggers to check up on.
Okay. I will await the posts.
I used to wear orange t-shirts all the time in high school. I had a closet full of orange t-shirts that I picked up at a going out of business sale. There were 6 different designs silk-screened in black on to the orange cloth. And of course just the plain orange t-shirt with un-muted tangerine brightness. My favorite was the reproduction of Van Gogh’s self portrait after he had cut off his ear. That is what came to mind when I read your title because that was indeed the orange shirt of crazy.
My graduating year-book photo said “Most likely to build an orange t-shirt factory.”
A little known secret from my past.
You are a strange man, my friend. But I get you. And I appreciate secrets. Most likely to build an orange t-shirt factory… you’re not my Lloyd character, are you?
No I am not Lloyd. But I am a character. And apparently so are you! 🙂