Assignment: You are to choose one (or more) of the dust canisters from David’s project gallery. You are then to use the visual elements of the canister you’ve chosen as clues to the character and life of the person whose remains were ultimately stored in it, and write a fictional account of that person’s life.
The pounding of my heart is in the small enclosed space that is my head. I know that it is coming. I know that slowly, like a slug, I am sliding back into that brutal reality. I can already smell the salt water and hear the seagulls singing their morbid song, alongside the screams of fright and terror.
Down! I am struggling against the sharp pains that run from my calf, to my spine, then back down again. The salty water mixed with the metallic taste of blood swims around me. I need air! The jaws let go and I push through the searing pain in my leg to swim to the surface. I breath. Liquid tickles down my face; whether it be tears or sea water i know not. Oh God, I think, I am going to die.
Once again I get pulled under the water by the powerful jaws of the shark. It grips tighter on the mangled bone and flesh that is my leg. I feel a snap and look down only to see my left calf sinking to the ocean floor beneath us. I let out air in an attempt to scream but only bubbles travel through the hole between my lips. Then I notice, without relief, that the sand is traveling by with great speed. He is taking me to open water. He lets go. Slowly he starts to travel in a circle around me, periodically slamming his massive head into my side. He is toying with me.
As I start to lose consciousness, many things happen very quickly. First the shark comes at me once again, except this time, he grips my head in his mouth with such ferocity that I would rather have one thousand elevators crush my head. Everything slowly gets darker. I am losing consciousness. Next there is a muffled sound of a gunshot above me and the jaws of death slacken. Finally, I lose consciousness.
*
Porridge Day
The metal bed is cold and hard. I am covered in my own urine and feces. I am dead, I think. I am dead. I slowly rise to a sitting position, and lean over to my left. I dig my fingers into the small, hand-carved slots between the bricks. I tighten my fingers around it and pull it out. This is the place where my personal items.
Slowly and carefully I stick my hand into the damp, dark hole in the wall. I avoid the electrical wires with the steady and skilled hand of an electrician; I have practiced this so much. I carefully
pick up the hard piece of metal that is my razor blade. I keep myself waiting in anticipation. Then with a steady hand i press the blade against the tight, almost transparent skin of my wrist, drawing a thin line of ruby red liquid. I feel the pain. I enjoy the pain. That is when i realize that I am alive. My life has become my surroundings. I am the metal beds that we sleep on. I am the cold white walls that enclose me. I am the deformities of the people around me and I am the sickness and the pain of the entrees. This sudden rush of red color is the only thing that keeps me sane.
I place the blade back into the hole and put the brick back into its slot in the wall. I lay quietly thinking of the episode I'd had yesterday and decide to stand by the decision that I made. I will not take the medicine or get the treatment. I refuse to walk around here like another zombie, oblivious to the world around me, caught up in my own troubles. I refuse to go through shock treatment (when I have a choice), and put up with the excruciating pain caused by the side effects of those medicines. I refuse.
This is the story of a man that had Post Traumatic Symptoms. He was attacked by a shark at the age of nine and was entered into the asylum at the age of ten because he had these "episodes" where he relived the situation. This except that was taken from his Collection of Thoughts showed the horrible life that he went through. He was in the asylum for so long that he lost track of the days and could only identify them by the dinner that was being served on that night. All of this takes place at the age of thirty nine.
After the "doctors" at the mental asylum found out that he was cutting his wrists, they said that they could not have him influencing the other entrees. He would have to be killed. He would have to be burned, as a matter of fact, alive. After his cremation, his ashes were placed in a copper can that was stamped with the number 2,193, signifying the number of death he was. He was placed on a shelf in a room in the asylum with the rest of the dead entrees.
After fifty-five years of sitting on a shelf in the asylum, the copper can began to transform. It rusted into a beautifully, horrible piece of art. The blue on the can signifies the ocean that he was attacked in and the white is the blurry figure of the shark that he saw underwater. His soul is speaking out and telling a story. His soul will never be free.
