Excerpts from SOME THINGS YOU LOVE WITH YOUR INSIDES. YOUR GUTS—A Novella
by Joshua Rodriguez
TABULA RASA
Tabula Rasa is spray painted over Lakewater, the name official, like that constitutes legal amendment. It’s the first thing seen driving in. They sleep in their car most nights and sometimes stay in dilapidated motels. But his dad’s right. The soda and beer are always flat. However, Carter doubts it’s some contrived idiosyncrasy—some cultivated quirk—like their iteration of a liturgical rite or tradition—Carter suspects it’s more a failing these Flat Earther wackadoos sublimated into profundity. Like Catholics transmuting sufferings into gifts from God—Stockholm syndrome. Churches welcome their congress with open arms. There’s a podium and pinboard with photographs of flat terrain. Even the most overzealous geologists would be unimpressed. It’s probably the first time this topography’s been revered. Fluorescent lights flicker. FEs convene and talk in conspiratorial tones. Like Galileo’s inbred, half-witted progeny. ‘I think my phone’s tapped,’ Carter’s dad says. ‘I’m just glad I’m here. Where people can think for themselves.’ They sometimes scheme but mostly commiserate. Carter sits in back. His father says to listen—that Carter’s old enough to understand. When meetings commence, Carter’s dad acts like Carter dematerialized. There’s palpable tension—words weighted with apprehension. It reminds Carter of when his mom brought him to stuffy NA meetings. Right down to the chairs, snacks, and coffee. Except at NA meetings, Carter actually learned a few things. It was a fly-on-the-wall vantage into his family’s dissolution. Carter’s mom was sober then. Which counts for something. He learned:
His mom cheated. ‘But I didn’t, like, have an affair,’ her tone suggested that would be more dignified. ‘I just needed to cop. I went to truck stops and solicited online. Withdrawing money only caused fights.’ She stood and spoke in a way Carter couldn’t help respecting since being trapped in what felt like a community college theater production of an insane asylum. ‘Truthfully? I was eventually doing it outta spite. He wouldn’t shut up about the horizon.’
His favorite memories weren’t what he thought. ‘I took Carter to Chuck-E-Cheeze one birthday,’ she said. ‘Just us two. I said I wanted to make it special. But I really just wanted to get loaded. I gave him cash to occupy himself and found a bar. I scored some shit, guzzled drinks, went back, and ate that cardboard pizza. Even fucked up I knew it was gross. I said I just wanted a special day with him. But using isn’t exactly conducive to truth.’
His father’s FE affiliation was the nail in the coffin. ‘My husband—God bless him,’ this was a year before losing custody—before the judge showed up unannounced to personally verify Carter’s living conditions, ‘He’s obsessed with the Earth being flat—not believing the lies we’re taught. Like Galileo was some fuck-up you keep around so you’re not getting loaded alone. He’s always chatting with strangers. He wants to move us to Illinois. He keeps calling it Tubola Rosa or some weird shit. What the hell’s in Illinois?
Carter absorbs it all.
APPLE TREES
Hal sits out front smoking cigarettes. The sun ripens and readies to set like a ship dropping anchor. He stares across the terrain—all 180- and 90-degree angles—squares, rectangles, and the occasional rhombus jutting out as shelter. Traffic encroaches like wildfire. It finally happened. They broke ground. They’ve lived here for generations. Hal remembers stepping off his porch into fields of apple trees. Now it’s a different kind of field—cauterized—hard and vapid—charred like vulcanized smoker’s lungs. Like what the Antichrist would be to Jesus H. He watched his dad wither down to nothing. His dad spent his entire life trying to be intractable and only substantiated the sole, immutable truth of existence: We’re born to be channels. He remembers their last lucid conversation.
‘Closer—come closer.’ He motioned Hal nearer. The sour stench of death emanated. Death eats its way out; not its way in. ‘Promise you’ll take care of the house.’
‘I will, Dad.’
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
‘Even without me breaking your balls about it?’
‘I’m sure you’ll break my balls from the afterlife. I’ll assume every morsel of bad luck is you getting even.’ ‘Always making jokes,’ his dad waved dismissively. ‘Tend to the house. While you still can. Before it’s a parking lot.’
‘Here we go…’
‘You’ll see.’
‘…’
They assumed this was age—the garrulous incontinence of someone on their way out.
‘Everyone’s petrified of being paved over—of turning into a strip mall. It’s the secret of our success.’
‘Whose success?’
‘Our country’s.’
‘Right, Dad…’
‘Everyone’s a cunt hair away from having off-ramp-front property.’
Hal observes everything his dad evinced. His mom assured (and subsequently reassured) him his dad was just losing it. Or already lost it. There were mixed messages. Hal studies a flyer like an insurance policy. It crinkles and echoes across the phantom field of apple trees. The new road is uncorrupted—practically billowy. Like he could sink into and through it. Like the night sky—infinite—speckled with glistening pockets of interned sunlight. He never thought he’d turn into his father, but c’est la mort. Pretty soon they’ll be routed. He remembers climbing apple trees and being chased out of the fields. Sometimes he hopes everyone’s wrong—that there’s some benevolent motivation behind paving over the world—that it’s done for them, not to them.
He studies the terrain—ironed flat. He butts his cigarette on his heel. His mom hates the black skids on the railing and floorboards. He thinks about how the world must be flat because things would make more sense. How a flat earth would be like a consolation prize from God. How the imprecision of anything but 180- and 90-degree angles is a curse—an onus. He was outraged when they spraypainted Tabula Rasa over Welcome to Lakewater. Now he’s coming around. He lights another cigarette, narrows his eyes: ‘Flat Earth, huh?’ He reads aloud. Not to himself or anyone else. The sky goes purple-black like it was reflecting the asphalt. Or vise-versa.
BEHEMOTH
If Hal’s learned one thing, it’s expectations beget disappointment. Paradise is ruined by hanging around. Like the Garden of Eden: even if Adam and Eve didn’t eat the apple (though most folks can’t resist free doughnuts, let alone the Fruit of Knowledge), things wouldn’t be any better. They’d have kids. Their kids would have kids. Each generation reproduces with itself—a recursive incestuous loop. It’d be nightmarish—populated by mutant tribes after generations of inbreeding. The Garden of Eden would end up being The Hills Have Eyes. Nothing’s inviolable—nothing’s sacred—once we’ve touched it. What could’ve been is only superior to what is because it’s nonexistent. Hal’s at a meeting in a church—churches are shoehorned in wherever they fit.
People talk about their weekends, families, prospective holidays—they whisper and touch shoulders in consolation. A kid sits in back. He looks about ten. He’s distended—disproportionate from unremitting incursions of growth spurts. It feels like everyone’s talking around the flat earth—the two-dimensional elephant in the room. ‘You really have to go during fall,’ someone says. ‘The leaves are gorgeous, and you miss tourist season.’
Hal helps himself to coffee and doughnuts. The pinboard has pictures of nondescript expanses of land.
‘We need a new landscaper,’ Hal hears.
‘I told you our guy’s the best.’
‘I wanted to give these guys a chance, but they don’t pay attention to details.’
‘Look where we’re at. You can’t expect everyone to pay attention to details.’
‘What’s the world coming to?’
It’s unceremonious—like a social club. A man goes to the kid—presumably his father— whispers and pats his head—the boy nods—voices crescendo in a cacophony. Hal has a cigarette, finishes his coffee, and refills it. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. The highway’s interloping and there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t know what this will do but at least it’s something.
‘Everyone—your attention please,’ a man walks to the podium. It’s desultory—like it’s their first meeting. The kid’s stoic. Hal’s heard him and his father sleep in their car. His dad works odd jobs when he can. ‘Let’s get started,’ the man at the podium says. ‘First thing’s first: new member introductions. You don’t have to come up here. Just stand. Don’t be shy—we don’t bite.’ Hal sits beside a behemoth of a man who smells the part. The man at the podium nods at Hal. Hal stands, talking awkwardly.
‘My name’s Hal. I saw this flyer…’ Hal can’t peel his eyes from the photographs—there’s even a landscape portrait (presumably by someone in attendance that’s even less interesting than its subject) hung like a toddler’s fingerpainting on a fridge. The land’s flat, gray, and depressing. Like the missing link between nature and parking lots—an evolutionary rung toward measureless, metastasizing highways. Hal gets more coffee and doughnuts and watches from the nosebleeds.
The kid leans over, whispering, ‘Flat earth—it’s all downhill from here.’
BIO: Josh Rodriguez is a writer living in Tijuana, Mexico with his girlfriend. His fiction has been published in Door is A Jar Magazine, Expat Press, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, Silent Auctions Magazine, Black Flowers Journal, Heavy Feather Review, Purple Wall Stories, Sledgehammer Lit, Loud Coffee Press, Fugitives & Futurists, and Maudlin House. He is the author of a novella, FAMINE: Get the Hell Outta Here While You Still Can (Alien Buddha Press) and Some Things You Love with Your Insides, Your Guts (Thirty West Publishing House). Find him on Instagram @yungtrompoking.