Lovely Lucy

Stan Rozenraukh

Send this away.

A meter maid comes, and the wind flooding the streets makes her cap go flying. She must now retire from the task at hand, that bulbous car down the street next to a meter glowing a rancid red, and make chase after her chapeau. As much as the wind helps in her motion, it doubles that effort for her cap. It now starts to pretend it is an airfoil, learning the concept of lift on the fly and evoking balloon jealousy as the children in the houses creating the shape of the street lower their blinds and turn their backs.

Meter maid Lucy screams, "now what?" and clouds cover the skies as much as condensed water can obscure any multiple visage entity. From space, this looks like a bumbling cataract errand, blinding the aliens from witnessing the magic that is our little tilted ball of heaven careening in its wilted orbit. Maybe when it was younger, it still had hair. Lucy has no idea, she is still the child looking at her father and for some awkward reason knowing that the top of his head was always this shiny, the outskirts of it laden with gray hairs standing on end unless he had just removed his own cap. Maybe this is why she is so attached to her own. Because he lost his on a day just like this one, and she can't stand the thought of history repeating itself, except now she knows the fear of having your child about face you as she darkens her room via window obstruction and purposefully, spitefully, turns on the lights to waste electricity. This was her, and now this is her son. He plays with the newly found cap that came down the chimney knowing full well that mother will be upset at the fact that he didn't clean it off of all the grime that Santa had left there, the lard lubricant for his jolly obesity so he can deliver presents to those good children, those not of six cornered star brainwashed faith.

Lucy looks to the sky, "now what?"

Her son looks in the mirror, he is a commander of an apocalyptic world's army just returned from battle, his spire covered in the dried blood of his fallen enemies. He returns to his wife to be. He returns in the hope of fulfilling his masturbation fantasy. He returns to know the mirror reflects his arousal and it is completely unbecoming of this ashen cap. There is a knock at the door. It is at this instant that the cap finds its way off of his head and into his lap as he sits down, scared. It can't be his mother. She has keys. He has no father. Lucy told him that he was fathered by aliens, maybe even the same ones that are now watching her cap search overhead. The same ones that probably have the technology to make a weather pattern like this and create the opportunity to distract his mother and pay a first, life changing visit to her little boy. So he opens the door and whimpers, "send this away," and the dark legged, barefoot shadow of a man takes the cap, turns around, and walks off. Lucy sits down on the curb and cries, "now what?" as the cap falls into her lap and she sees his legs, the legs of the man who fathered her child. The dirtiest legs in the universe. "My appetite can teethe on its own now. Like this cap, it has developed its own meaning regardless of if its wearer represents it or not. See, as it flew on its own and your son wore it, he inherited with trapezoidal green hat shapes. You do realize that he will be as your father was, and will die the way he died, losing all hope for himself and his family and his civilized culture. See what this legacy has done for you.

"You are worthless now."