Twittering From the Circus of the Dead

  Twittering from

  the Circus of the Dead

  A Story

  Joe Hill

  Contents

  Twittering from the Circus of the Dead

  An Excerpt from NOS4A2

  About the Author

  Also by Joe Hill

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Twittering from the Circus of the Dead

  What is Twitter?

  “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? . . . Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the Web.”

  —from twitter.com

  TYME2WASTE I’m only trying this because I’m so bored I wish I was dead. Hi Twitter. Want to know what I’m doing? Screaming inside.

  8:17 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE My, didn’t that sound melodramatic.

  8:19 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Lets try this again. Hello Twitterverse. I am Blake and Blake is me. What am I doing? Counting seconds.

  8:23 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Only about 50,000 more until we pack up and finish what is hopefully the last family trip of my life.

  8:25 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE It’s been all downhill since we got to Colorado. And I don’t mean on my snowboard.

  8:27 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE We were supposed to spend the break boarding and skiing but it’s too cold and won’t stop snowing so we had to go to plan B.

  8:29 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Plan B is Mom and I face off in a contest to see who can make the other cry hot tears of rage and hate first.

  8:33 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I’m winning. All I have to do to make Mom leave the room at this point is walk into it. Wait, I’m walking into the room where she is now . . .

  8:35 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE She’s such a mean bitch.

  10:11 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE @caseinSD, @bevsez, @harmlesspervo yay my real friends! I miss San Diego. Home soon.

  10:41 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE @caseinSD Hell no I’m not afraid Mom is going to read any of this. She’s never going to know about it.

  10:46 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE After she made me take down my blog, it’s not like I’m ever going to tell her.

  10:48 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE You know what bitchy thing she said to me a couple hours ago? She said the reason I don’t like Colorado is because I can’t blog about it.

  10:53 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE She’s always saying the Net is more real for me and my friends than the world. For us nothing really happens till someone blogs about it.

  10:55 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Or writes about it on their Facebook page. Or at least sends an instant message about it. She says the internet is “life validation.”

  10:55 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Oh and we don’t go online because it’s fun. She has this attitude that people socially network ’cause they’re scared to die. It’s deep.

  10:58 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE She sez no one ever blogs their own death. No one instant-messages about it. No one’s Facebook status ever says “dead.”

  10:59 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE So for online people, death doesn’t happen. People go online to hide from death and wind up hiding from life. Words right from her lips.

  11:01 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Shit like that, she ought to write fortune cookies for a living. You see why I want to strangle her. With an ethernet cable.

  11:02 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Little bro asked if I could blog about him having sex with a certain goth girl from school to make it real, but no one laughed.

  11:06 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I told Mom, no, the reason I hate Colorado is ’cause I’m stuck with her and it’s all waaaaay too real.

  11:09 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE And she said that was progress and got this smug bitch look on her face and then Dad threw down his book & left the room.

  11:11 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I feel worst for him. A few more months and I’m gone forever, but he’s stuck with her for life and all her anger and the rest of it.

  11:13 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I’m sure he wishes he just got us plane tickets now. Suddenly our van is looking like the setting for a cage-match duel to the death.

  11:15 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE All of us jammed in together for 3 days. Who will emerge alive? Place your bets, ladies and germs. Personally I predict no survivors.

  11:19 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Arrr. Fuck. Shit. It was dark when I went to bed and it is dark now and Dad says it’s time to leave. This is so terribly wrong.

  6:21 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE We’re going. Mom gave the condo a careful search to make sure nothing got left behind, which is how she found me.

  7:01 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Damn, knew I needed a better hiding place.

  7:02 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Dad just said the whole trip ought to take between 35 and 40 hours. I offer this as conclusive proof there is no God.

  7:11 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Tweeting just to piss Mom off. She knows if I’m typing something on my phone, I’m obviously engaged in sin.

  7:23 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I’m expressing myself and staying in touch with my friends, and she hates it. Whereas if I was knitting and unpopular . . .

  7:25 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE . . . then I’d be just like her when she was 17. And I’d also marry the first guy who came along and get knocked up by 19.

  7:25 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Coming down the mountain in the snow. Coming down the mountain in the snow. 1 more hairpin turn and my stomach’s gonna blow . . .

  7:30 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE My contribution to this glorious family moment is going to come when I barf on my little brother’s head.

  7:49 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE If we wind up in a snowbank and have a Donner Party, I know whose ass they’ll be chewing on first. Mine.

  7:52 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Of course my survival skillz would amount to Twittering madly for someone to rescue us.

  7:54 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Mom would make a slingshot out of rubber from the tires, kill squirrels with it, make a fur bikini out of ’em, and be sad when we were rescued.

  7:56 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Dad would go out of his mind because we’d have to burn his books to stay warm.

  8:00 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Eric would put on a pair of my pantyhose. Not to stay warm.
Just ’cause my little brother wants to wear my pantyhose.

  8:00 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I wrote that last bit ’cause Eric was looking over my shoulder.

  8:02 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE But the sick bastard said wearing my pantyhose is the closest he’ll probably come to getting laid in high school.

  8:06 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE He’s completely gross but I love him.

  8:06 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Mom taught him to knit while we were snowed in here in happy CO and he knitted himself a cocksock, and then she was sorry.

  8:11 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I miss my blog, which she had no right to make me take down.

  8:13 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE But Twittering is better than blogging because my blog always made me feel like I should have interesting ideas to blog about.

  8:14 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE But on Twitter every post can only be 140 letters long. Which is enough room to cover every interesting thing to ever happen to me.

  8:15 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE True. Check it out.

  8:15 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Born. School. Mall. Cell phone. Driver’s permit. Broke my nose playing trapeze at 8–there goes the modeling career. Need to lose 10 lbs.

  8:19 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Think that covers it.

  8:20 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE It’s snowing in the mountains but not down here, snow falling in the sunlight in a storm of gold. Good-bye beautiful mountains.

  9:17 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Hello not so beautiful Utah desert. Utah is brown and puckered like Judy Kennedy’s weird nipples.

  9:51 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE @caseinSD Yes she does have weird nipples. And it doesn’t make me a lesbo for noticing. Everyone notices.

  10:02 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Sagebrush!!!!!! W00T!

  11:09 AM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Now Eric is trying on my pantyhose. He’s bored. Mom thinks it’s funny, but Dad is stressed.

  12:20 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Dared Eric to wear a skirt in the diner to get our takeout. Dad says no. Mom is still laughing.

  12:36 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I promised him if he does it I’ll invite a certain hot goth to the pool party in April so he can see her in her tacky bikini.

  12:39 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE There’s no way he’ll do it.

  12:42 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE ZOMG hes doing it. Dad is going into the diner with him to make sure he isn’t killed by offended Mormons.

  12:44 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Eric came back alive. Eric saves the day. I’m actually glad to be in the van right now.

  12:59 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Dad says Eric sat at the bar and talked football with this big trucker guy. Trucker guy was fine with the skirt and pantyhose.

  1:03 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE He’s still wearing it. The skirt. He’s probably a total closet tranny. Sicko. Course that would be fun. We could shop together.

  1:45 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE @caseinSD Yes we do have to invite a certain goth to the pool party now. She probably won’t even come. I think sunlight burns her.

  2:09 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Every time I start to fall asleep, the van hits a bump and my head falls off the seat.

  11:01 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Trying to sleep.

  11:31 PM – 1 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I give up trying to sleep.

  1:01 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Oh fuck Eric. He’s asleep and he looks like he’s having a wet dream about a certain goth chick.

  1:07 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Meanwhile I’d have a better chance of sleeping if there were only steel pins inserted under my eyelids.

  1:09 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I’m so happy right now. I just want to hold this moment for as long as I can.

  6:11 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I just want to be home. I hate Mom. I hate everyone in the van. Including myself.

  8:13 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Okay. This is why I was happy earlier. It was 4 in the morning and Mom pulled into a rest area and then she came and got me.

  10:21 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE She said it was my turn to drive. I said my permit is only for driving in Cali, and she said just get behind the wheel.

  10:22 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE She told me if I got pulled over to wake her up and we’d switch and everything would be all right.

  10:23 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE So she went to sleep in the passenger seat and I drove. We were down in the desert and the sun came up behind me.

  10:25 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE And then there were coyotes in the road. In the red sunlight. They were all over the interstate, and I stopped so I wouldn’t hit them.

  10:26 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Their eyes were gold and the sun was in their fur and there were so many, this huge pack. Just standing there like they were waiting for me.

  10:28 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I wanted to take a picture with my cell phone, but I couldn’t figure out where I left it. While I was looking for it, they disappeared.

  10:31 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE When Mom woke up, I told her all about them. And then I thought she’d be mad I didn’t shake her awake to see them, so I said I was sorry.

  10:34 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE And she said she was glad I didn’t wake her up, because that moment was just for me. And for maybe three seconds I liked her again.

  10:35 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE But then in the place we ate breakfast I was looking at my e-mail for a sec. & I heard Mom saying to the waitress, We apologize for her.

  10:37 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I guess the waitress was standing there waiting for my order and I didn’t notice.

  10:40 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE But I didn’t sleep all night and I was tired and zoned out and that’s why I didn’t notice, not ’cause I was looking at my phone.

  10:42 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE And Mom had to trot out her stories about being a waitress herself and that it was demeaning not to be acknowledged.

  10:45 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Just to rub it in. And she can be completely right and I can still hate the way she makes me feel like shit at every opportunity.

  10:46 AM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I napped, but I don’t feel better.

  4:55 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Dad of course has to go the slowest possible route by way of every back road. Mom says he missed a turn and added 100 miles to the trip.

  6:30 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Now they’re fighting. OMG I want out of this van.

  6:37 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Eric, I am psychically willing you to find some reason for us to get off the road. Put on the pantyhose again. Say you have to pee.

  6:
49 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Anything. Please.

  6:49 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE No no NO Eric, no. I wanted you to think up a GOOD reason not to get off the road but not this . . . this is going to be bad.

  6:57 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Mom doesn’t want to pull over either. Write it down, kids, first time in two years we’ve agreed on anything.

  7:00 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Oh Dad is being a prick now. He says there was no point in taking back roads if we weren’t going to find some culture.

  7:02 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE We are driving up to something called the Circus of the Dead. The ticket guy looks really REALLY sick. Not funny-sick. SICK-sick.

  7:06 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Sores around his mouth and few teeth and I can smell him. He’s got a pet rat. His pet rat dived in his pocket and came out with the tickets.

  7:08 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE No it wasn’t cute. None of us want to touch the tickets.

  7:10 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Boy, they’re really packing them in. Show starts in 15 min., but the parking lot is ½ empty. The big top is a black tent with holes in it.

  7:13 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Mom says to be sure to keep doing whatever I’m doing on my phone. She wouldn’t want me to look up and see something happening.

  7:17 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE Oh that was shitty. She just said to Dad that I’ll love the circus because it’ll be just like the internet.

  7:18 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE YouTube is full of clowns, message boards are full of fire-breathers, and blogs are for people who can’t live without a spotlight on them.

  7:20 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I’m going to tweet like 5 times a minute and make her insane.

  7:21 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE The usher is a funny old Mickey Rooney type with a bowler and a cigar. He also has on a hazmat suit. He says so he can’t get bitten.

  7:25 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie

  TYME2WASTE I almost fell twice on the walk to our seats. Guess they’re saving $ on lights. I’m using my iPhone as a flashlight. Hope there isn’t a fire.