Only just the other day the Bad Magician was counting the floors of a falling building, trying to count them as the building fell. This made the act of counting nearly impossible--buildings that are falling will not hold still. For instance, you couldn't have a falling building for a child, and then expect to enjoy seeing the new school pictures every year. "Here's Nathan when he was falling down in grade school, and here's one of him when he was about to graduate." Just another building falling over and over, and the exact number of floors a mystery.
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No one wants to play with America anymore. The land itself has begun to squirm, like a baby bird being eaten by an intruder. Just a reflexive contraction at first, then struggling, then death and stillness. Oh, it was going to spread its wings forever, that baby bird. It would fly to the moon, and sing catchy dance songs, and blow shit up wherever it wanted to, and that was fun for awhile. But then it stopped looking at the internal reports, and forgot about the graveyard, and some of the walls became mottled and rotted and fungus took over, and there was no wall, just stealth growth, moving slowly towards the door.
The Bad Magician could have sworn he'd turned off the lights forever, but they came back on anyway. He could have sworn that the windows were painted the color of obsidian, but no, they were candy green and blue, and circles fell out of them and landed on the floor, a flat surface made of entropy and propane. Breakfast, thought the Bad Magician, I want Eggs on the table wobbled, and cream wants coffee, and the mayor (the mayor's mayor) secures toast for lifeboats on the rollicking floor, the tempest-tossed floor, and the windows shattered (hah--knew they would) and approximating an answer will be impossible for a time. Just show up late and wait outside the door. And the floor became the sea.
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How many years fighting that stupid war? How many limbs blown off, and sewn into jumpsuits and tea cozies? Where am I again, asked the Bad Magician? Where is the world? The sleep had been bottomless, but then it had a bottom, and he was resurfacing, and a broken radio began to play, and it was Godzilla, and he told a story where people had to wake up, they had to wake up at last, at long last. And everybody was dancing, and there were sparklers and couches on fire, naked people trembling in the cold. And the phone rang. Time to wake up, Bad Magician. Time to wake the fuck up.
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