IN THE ABSENCE OF EXTRAS
By Ryan Michael Commis
Everyone is gone. Disappeared or invisible. I don't remember exactly when, only that I woke up alone and it stayed that way. These days I spend most of my time looking through old family albums. Diaries. I listen to their messages. Eat their special spoiled left-overs, look through their sock drawers. Giggle at their secrets. This is what I'm doing for now, while the thrill holds. They stare at me, frozen from within their frames. With graduation hats on. With acne. Holding up drinks with shiny red eyes. Their lives on pause, all their unfinished chores, dirty floors and dust mice never meant for a stranger's eyes. I find TVs on static all of the time. Played-out songs stuck on repeat. Things-to-do lists. Overflowing automatic pet feeders. Overdue Blockbuster movie rentals. Shaggy lawns and filthy SUVs. I used to feel bad. I don't anymore.
Some places are a fun stay for a while. First the go-kart place with Johnny Walker Blue Label. Then post-colonial mansions after the gun expo. But even crashing Ferraris and lobbing hand grenades gets old. It takes a long time, but it does. Dropping bowling balls off of a building onto parked car hoods barely even tingles anymore. Last summer I drove three thousand miles just to torch the Hollywood sign. I remember my hands reeking of gasoline, skin hot from the flames. Slowly walking away backwards, just wishing someone else could see it, the ribbons of flame streaming into the black sky. The glory of it. In the following months I burned down nearly all of Vegas and then, later on, huge sections of Los Angeles until it became tedious. It took me months of planning and shopping. Talking to myself the whole time, hoping to develop multiple personalities or hallucinations. Like in the movies. Ironically, it was during this stage that I quit smoking cigarettes, because without anybody around it seemed silly. I still smoke grass, but I rarely finish a joint and usually nap the rest of the day, the roach smoldering away pointlessly next to me. Traveling is good, it lets me not think.
The silence is what gets me the most. No fat pigeons or car alarms or leaf-blowers or annoying ice-cream man music. Just sometimes the wind. Every step I take snaps with significance. At first I screamed for help, then joked to myself and laughed, then cried, then sang, then cried more, now nothing. Not even whistling, notanymore. I'm somewhere near the Grand Canyon now and I've been thinking about rooting out some heroin or something. But if I found it and allowed my veins to taste it I'd probably just spend the rest of my time here hunting for more. Maybe I'll drown myself in the Colorado River. The soft gurgle of waterflowing above my head. Jesus, silence has turned me into a tourist.
I'm desperately lonely. I need to tell jokes and call out dead-eye rock assaults. Anyone. Joan Rivers' daughter. Anyone. Even if I ended up hurling Joan Rivers' daughter into the Grand Canyon at least that would be something. I would cut off my arm for a companion of some sort. Even one of those little yippee rat-dogs. Someone to see how good of a person I can be, if given the chance.
