Ferry Line to Bleach Land
Zac Boring
|
The blue shirted Futures lined up and waited for the ferry to take them to a place where they were told they could buy bleach.
In the line some were nervous, excited, sick, frightened, and very few were completely sure of themselves; the ramp to the ferry was far and the boat didn't stay long. Some by some the first eager few who didn't think much were the first to board, they had their schedules planned out by someone else and hoped that the plan would work for them. But those were the few, most stayed at the ramp and waited and waited because it is a big deal to lease a part of your life away on something someone else told you was a good idea. They waited and felt like they were getting older and the ramp went up and now was the last chance to get to the promised Bleach Land so they had to jump or stay and most jumped. As they jumped they looked down at the black water and all those who failed the leap floated and crashed against the bank and the boat, as they jumped they looked back at the ones who decided to stay, the ones who decided to miss the boat. They jumped over the black water, hoping to land on a stable deck but instead crashed onto an uncertain and expensive floor where they would spend the next few years drinking and going two by two into dark rooms that they would lock from the inside until morning. They would reaffirm their choice because there wasn't really any going back, they knew that, so they made the best of it and looked out for the Bleach Land. The trip was sometimes uninteresting so they looked at the water and the sky and found it was brown and black from the engines and when they asked the captain he exclaimed “the blacker the better!” because that meant a lot of trips had been taken. They learned from each other and the ferrymen and women whose task it was to make sure their paying passengers knew enough to survive once they reached the Bleach Land. Eventually, they would make it to the Bleach Land where they would be put into more lines and asked to pay their fee but they would look dumb and say, “I don't have it now,” and hand over an IOU with an expiration date that would later be found on their tombstone. The ticket men would take the slip and grin, the lease was signed now. They bleached their shirts white and went into the shops and bought everything with their fake money because they wanted to impress people they didn't know. They would get together and burn down the forests, dam up the rivers and dry out all the fish and sell them as mirror ornaments for one low payment of $6.99, so they had room to build their factory made self-imposed prisons with their white picket fences. Eventually, they would go two by two into their prisons that locked from the inside and come out with little blue shirted Futures who were promptly sent off into the ferry line to find the new-promised Bleach Land. Some would go first because it was planned for them, most would wait because it was a big deal to lease part of your life away and the rest would sit around a campfire in the old forest before the ferry and tell stories and sing, unsure if it was good to have missed the boat. |
