The Anomalies Read Online Free Page B

beautiful Satanist friend speaks the truth.
    We had our first band practice five months ago. Since then we have only had five practices because we have to work around my brothers’ schedules. As long as only one brother is at my house, our practice can go on smoothly. But if there is morethan one brother present, our power-pop new wave heavy metal punk rock music cannot compete with their animalism and ridicule. Besides the problem of my brothers, I also have to work around the schedules of my bandmates’ “real world” obligations, those obligations to family, work, etcetera, etcetera, nut sack, nut sack, nut sack, nut sack.
    To say the least, five practices in five months is not the proper amount of attention that my hopes and dreams deserve.
    Maybe we could try playing at Opal’s again.
    “You saw how my old neighbors called the cops on us!” says Opal. My elderly rock and roll friend speaks the truth.
    Ray lives in an apartment, so that is no good. What about your house, Aurora?
    “I’m still fighting with my dad. He won’t even let me have friends over, let alone have a band playing in his house.”
    “What about my house?” queries Ember.
    “No, little skittle,” says Opal. “We can’t risk your parents finding out that I let you run around with all these guys. They just wouldn’t get it, and I’d be liable to lose my gig babysitting you.”
    We will just have to continue practicing at my shack. We will just have to build Rome.
    “I can’t wait ’til we play a show,” says Aurora. “That’s the only thing I miss about my old job, being on stage.”
    “I’d be missing giving the sailors lap dances, myself,” says Opal.
    I think that gradually my bandmates will come to associate this band of ours with the future good or the good future, the tomorrow that can drag us through today. They have just the right amount of discontent and individualistic life force to driveus upward, and more importantly, the humanoids in the “real world” are showing no signs of letting up on The Conspiracy of Mediocrity, the two-hundred-year plan that The Thoughtless Confederacy subjects us to daily. The humanoids don’t know that it’s every ounce of insincerity and ignorance that fuels the hope rockets we keep within our amplifiers and p.a. speakers, those ambitious mechanisms which can propel us out of dead end town.

IV. She’s Got Spunk

Opal
    They got us sitting in a big, happy circle like little kids in a kindergarten class. Some of us are in wheelchairs. Some of us are hooked up to machines. Some of us have grandchildren who haven’t visited us in two years despite the checks we sent them.
    But not me. And I’m not dressed pathetically like them either. When people get this old, it’s almost like they give up on fashion altogether. Their outfits are so plain that I can’t figure out whether I’m underdressed or overdressed.
    The group therapist fag takes roll and doesn’t mention the fact that one of us died since the last meeting. Then he pulls out some papers and says “take one and pass it over” like he always does.
    “Okay, group. First off, this handout has a list of signs and symptoms of depression,” he lisps. “Now, as I read them off, I’d like for you all to consider whether or not you’ve been experiencing them. Okay?”
    “Lay ’em on me,” I say. It’s not like anyone else’s keister was going to respond.
    “Okay. Symptoms of depression: decrease of weight, increase of weight, loss of motivation, sleeping too much, sleeping not enough, uncontrollable crying, thoughts of suicide, becoming slower at everything, loss of concentration, loss of interest, and isolating yourself from everyone.”
    Just as I had reckoned, everyone in the world is depressed. The half-dead folks sitting in this circle are no exception. You can already smell the formaldehyde.
    “So those are just some things you can be watching for to help you decide whether you’re depressed or not, or to see