Scooby Doo (weekly flash 2025-23)

In an early draft the story became a Scooby-Doo fan fiction. This was never intended or by design, but rather a convenience of the familiar: the story needed several characters at once and the setting, a gothic castle almost dangling off the edge a narrow cliff, seemed to require a counterpoint of innocence, five young friends (one so near-mythically child-like any competent reader would understand the symbol he was) against the endless night, colorful clothing as though to pollute the corridors and halls, which to this point had only been blue and gold, in each color’s darkest variation, and silent save for arbitrary whispering or creaks. Why were the children there? Did it even matter? They had captured their prey as they always did, their target, clad in the rusted shell of a now-black armor, fallen over down onto the ground. The children surrounded the knight as though to prevent its escape, though it had given up the ghost. Perhaps for the first time ever, their target had died. Purple smoke seeped out of perforations in its helmet, around where the body beneath might have had its eyes, and it pooled or perhaps clouded above the children, blinking now and then as it started to swirl, as though to imitate a hurricane. —Ru-roh, said the most innocent child.

I was living that year in Miami, which I’m assured was nice. It would be a lie to say I stayed indoor most of the time, afraid of heat and interstates and people, but lies are sometimes better than the truth, the way a photograph is better than your vision, as it lasts beyond the moment, and details can be zoomed it. I read the draft on a visit to a friend.

—It’s like a dream, he said, in that there seems to be no ending. No beginning either, I guess, it’s just you’re there forever experiencing, the gang around the knight as he bleeds out.

—When you were writing it? I asked.

—No, he said.

—To read it?

He thought a moment, or stalled, either which manifested as staring at his coffee, unpeeling layers from its paper sleeve the way that I, in nervous moments, unpeel the skin around my thumb.

—The entirety of the image, he said, pressing his most recent peel back. Everything, I think, exists already, so I was just marking it down.

In the story next the cloud was forming words. It was unclear (from clumsy detail work) if it spoke or transmitted thoughts, but the words were at least described as being purple, the way a day might be called warm or cold. It was praying to the children, describing death in abstract detail. It begged forgiveness for the way it manuevered life.

—No, Fred said at once. We cannot offer absolution.

—Yeah man, Shaggy said. Like, we’re no different from you.

—I can only assume you’re attempting to use us, Velma said.

—Look to yourself, Daphne advised.

—What are you even trying to say with this? I asked my friend.

—Some things are images, he said.

It made no sense. I couldn’t see his story as anything more than a joke, at best, a failure or embarrassment at worst. Nothing occurred. Events just happened. It was one more moment among many, none the same.

May 29, 2025

An Analysis (weekly flash 2025-22)

Regarding self-immolation, I am terribly afraid. This makes a bit of sense on its face, of course: fire’s already frighting before one even considers the flesh, but once the fire and flesh have touched the result is terror itself: the melting and the charring and pain as well, or perhaps more shockingly the skeleton, which seems (once the fire has reached a certain cohesion) to take over for the musculature as the body’s defining shape. This is nothing more than the fear of fire, of course: a fear as common as worker ants or potholes, as meaningless (almost) as natural fact. Our focus then should be on the words themselves: immolation and its prefix self.

Immolation, as well, is perhaps self-evident: a fear of flame to its completion, as it were: sensation to the point sensation ends. Self is the part that’s strange, as self must muddle motivations. One doesn’t burst to flame as by mistake, as in spontaneous combustion, but rather methodically engages at first in a simple act of purchase, in order to gain such fluid as gasoline, perhaps as well (depending on personal habit) a lighter, the first of several soaking rags, a video camera, microphone equipment, an inconspicuous car, a sufficient map. One does not transform oneself by accident either but rather studies considered patterns of security cameras, memorizes guard schedules, routes, calculates moments long enough a body, once burnt, cannot be doused back to partial silencing recovery by its bold statement’s first audience, the simple or instrumental protectors of property and the sort at the scene of the crime, security types, idiot viewers, certain the greatest act a man might partake in is to recover another’s life, as death by definition (the fool believes) is always meaningless, or if it contains a meaning it’s only a demerit of a sort, a failure maintain duty, not a transmission, one much for meaningful than words, so strong it defies and redefines reality: I at least take no part. The act must be intentional. I, the immolatee, must control it.

j, my counselor tells me, don’t you find the meaning of your terrors apparent? Recall previous discussions of your time spent underground. Not many people have dealt with the literal experience of being held against their will, tied in an acrylic box beneath the earth, dirt and worms and falling rain so tantalizing visible overtop one’s head, etc. The body finds a stasis, you know, with habit. Perhaps we can presume this one result of a sudden resumption of free will, a renewed sort of terror in what you’re now able to do. What if control’s not so different from its lack? Are you understanding?

I close my eyes, we’re only on the phone: she doesn’t notice. These thoughts (even my fears) are just ideas. I am material. I try for the moment to focus on my breath. No matter what I do, the breaths go on.