Mickey the bricky
Have u ever noticed that prison bars seem to
smile in the night
like demented
Cheshire
Cats ?
The moon lets down her hair, and the Shadows climb down spilling themselves upon the concrete floor. Their bodies spell out:
P E E P.
Enough of this though. The bars open now because it’s morning.
Hello, how are you?
Shh, it’s 4am and the coffee is shite.
Everyone is wearing a grey jumpsuit. Everyone has their head down. Everyone is cattle.
Criminals, outcasts, poor, all sequestered to The Condos—cells attached to a wallMart department store the size of an army base.
The Jumpers are split into groups: one part fixes gadgets, one builds toys, one paints generic art, and the last one—they just dig.
Somewhere in the crowd is Mickey:
Mickey the Bricky from Outs City.
Every day is the same for Mickey:
Here he is digging now.
Tnk. Sweat. Tnk. Sweat. Tnk.
The jumpsuit half-off and two old scars on the chest exposed. Inmate 4888. Prone to dropping expensive things, and doing his best to not lose concentration.
Mickey laid brick before the wallMart department store. That’s why they thought he’d be good at the digging, but his back hurts now. He’s 50, and he does not particularly like to dig.
And yet.
Tnk. Sweat. Tnk. Sweat. Tnk.
About twenty Jumpers digging at the same holes for days at a time before stepping over and starting on a new one. A fence boomerangs around the wasted perimeter with one tree sitting just outside.
Mickey notices Birdie in the tree. She has cotton in her mouth. Where’d you get that, Birdie?
Just inside the fence near the tree is an empty garden bed. Last year, a Politician visited the wallMart with news-cameras and they made a speech while gesturing to the garden and they used words like ‘initiative’ and ‘rehabilitation program.’
Mickey was standing closest to the Politician at the time and so the camera-people made him throw some seeds into a small hole and then cover it up with his hands—cut!—and once again for good measure.
Nothing ever came out from that small hole.
Birdie flies down off the tree, hopping around before burying her head in the garden soil and throwing it all around. She’s eating the dirt?
Birdie wants to be a flower?
Birdie digs herself a grave?
Officer smacks Mickey in the back of the head. Just cleaning between her wings. Nothing to do with you.
Tnk. Sweat. Tnk. Sweat. Tnk.
Ow, though, just then—
Mickey’s heart starts to hurt,
and he falls down.
*
Mickey’s in Warden’s office now. The office overlooks The Gallery where some of the Jumpers paint things for wallMart to sell.
Warden’s kitty is lying on the desk. Warden takes his glasses off and wipes them neatly with a handkerchief.
A heart attack in the yard yesterday, Mickey?
But, not one, just felt like it. Doctor says, There’s fire in Mickey’s guts. Take 1 of these after every meal to snuff it out, okay?
They don’t know where to put Mickey now. Scared he’s gonna take something. Mickey used to take a lot of things. He called it collecting. He called it making a nest.
While Warden tap taps his pen against the desk’s plexiglass, Mickey’s right hand is fidgeting with a tiny plastic doll in his pocket. The little doll came with A Dream Home in the shape of a clamshell but Mickey couldn’t find a way to sneak that out from the Repairing Floor. Maybe she might think of his pocket as a Dream Vacation?
Next to the tiny plastic doll in Mickey’s pocket is a die and a small cogwheel. Mickey calls them charms. Officer gave him the die because it had just one dot on all the sides so it was no good. Officer likes Mickey, but Officer smacks him when the Warden’s around.
Officer stands in the doorway.
Kitty moves to the chair as Warden stands up and looks down at The Gallery thinking what to do, oh what to do with you, Mickey. I’m scared you’re gonna take something, so—Kitty licks her lips—Warden says to him, You get to go make bozo DaVincis with the other bozos.
Mickey does what he’s told because he does not want a hosing down.
*
Officer shows Mickey into The Gallery. There’s an image of a painting projected at the front of the room. All the Jumpers are in rows of five and have their heads down over canvases methodically filling in the image.
Right now they paint what looks to be a sad city with lots of lights and wind in the sky. The name at the bottom of the painting says, The Starry Night.
Officer points to an empty canvas close to the front. Mickey walks over. He’s not sure what to do. There’s dots and numbers on the big white paper with brushes on the left and paints on the right: Black, White, Yellow, Blue, Green.
At the front, under the projector, is Niki who sorts the paints and takes care of the brushes. He sees Mickey is confused so he goes over.
Nik says Shh, it’s easy. Paint-by-number. He points to the numbers underneath the paints and then to the big white paper. Mickey says, Okay.
Upstairs is the big window with Warden sitting at the desk. Kitty stares at Mickey through the glass.
He picks up one of the brushes and dips it into the blue paint. As he brings the brush over to the paper, it drips onto a part where the yellow is supposed to go.
His fingers are too stubby. It’s supposed to be tiny, tiny strokes, but Mickey’s strokes are chubby like Mickey. Officer keeps taking his paintings away and throwing them in a big pile.
Officer takes Mickey’s fourth big white paper away, and says, Okay, no more, Mick. He says, You go help Niki with the clean-up.
So Mickey helps clean off the canvases, and to fill the paints up, and to make sure the brushes are nice. Mickey’s good at that. He likes to put things in the right places.
Nik teaches Mickey all about The Gallery and how to run the mechanical colour crank. Everybody loves Nik ‘cause he’s a joker. Falls down just to get a laugh. Puts stuff in his pants and says he’s happy to see ya.
Niki’s friends give Mick weird looks in the hallways. But Mickey hopes when they all see him at the front of the room with Niki, they’ll think, maybe he’s not so bad.
Nik says, Psst, and shows Mickey something he painted on a square piece of toilet paper. He’s hiding it under the desk.
Officer suddenly notices and sends Nik to solitary.
Everybody laughs.
*
The Gallery closes down for renovations. The Jumpers get the day off, but at 4am when Mickey’s cell opens, there’s Officer standing around the corner.
He says, You gotta come learn about the new Gallery computer, and he leads the way to the Library.
Mick asks, What about Nik? But Officer says he’s not coming back. Just Mick in charge now.
Everything in The Condos is concrete grey or stark white cinder blocks ft. scuff marks. Everything except the Library. In there is a medley of pink champagnes, olives, sunflowers, chocolates & tobaccos, and one single splash of avocado green.
Three rows of books, two long tables, and one small study room where Officer tells Mickey to go and wait.
In the small room is a desk with a computer the size of a car engine. On the wall is a big photo and at the bottom it says, Annapurna Massif, Nepal.
Mickey goes up to the window and sees Birdie outside in the tree. Most of the Jumpers out there are playing basketball, but some of them are trying to throw sticks at Birdie. Mickey says, Hey, stop that! But no one can hear him.
Librarian comes in and says, Hello, Mickey. Have a seat. We’re just gonna learn some basics, okay? She takes out a colourful booklet called Computer Etiquette, and opens it to the center-fold:
KEYBOARD HANDS
A S D F SPACE J K L ;
Librarian shows Mickey the page. There’s left hand / right hand / home row. She says just Enter matters.
Mickey asks, Can I look up where Birdie comes from? But Librarian says, No, we’re going to practice hitting Enter on a dead channel.
Librarian opens a game on the computer called Conveyer Belt. In the game, Mickey plays someone in a jumpsuit who watches jars go by on the belt. When the jar is empty, it’s okay, but when the jar has something inside, Mickey has to hit Enter so the little digital jar can be destroyed.
Librarian says, See, easy. All you have to do is press Enter at 7:30am when Officer says so.
Mickey asks, What’s ESC?
She says just Enter matters.
*
The new Gallery computer now releases the paints through a series of tubes to the Jumpers’ stations.
There are big dispensers underneath the front desk capable of creating any colour under the sun. For now, though, it’s programmed just for Black, White, Yellow, Blue, Green.
Underneath the Jumpers’ stations is a special slot for their used brushes and discarded canvases. All Mickey will have to do now is click the right button for the machine to clean the brushes, and then he’ll collect the used canvases at the end of the day.
Today is Mickey’s first time using the new computer. It’s a very hot day so Officer opens up one of the windows and Mickey can hear Birdie chirping at the tree outside. He turns on the computer, and double clicks The Starry Night file in the corner. It looks to be loading, so he smiles and pats the computer on the head.
He wipes a bit of sweat off his brow and waits for the program to finish booting up. Through the upstairs glass, Mickey can see Warden’s back turned at his desk, but Kitty isn’t there today.
The software loads, and at exactly 7:30am, Mickey hits Enter.
But, after a sec, Mickey realizes nothing is coming out of the tubes. Not sure what to do, he hits Enter again. This time, he can hear the dispensers under the front desk start to rumble. Paint starts to emerge from the tubes towards the Jumpers. But the paint is not Black, White, Yellow, Blue, or Green. Instead, the paint emerging from the front desk is Hot Pink.
Mickey tries to hit Delete, but Officer notices what’s happening.
The computer’s screen is glowing pink too.
Warden runs up to the glass, and a feather suddenly flies in from outside.
*
They asked Mickey, Did you hack the computer?
Mickey says, No. All he does is press Enter at 7:30am when Officer says so. He doesn’t even know how to surf the web. He’s scared of the ocean. Mickey’s mum used to stick his head in the tub when he was a bad.
They don’t believe Mickey, and so they hose him down on the way to solitary. There’s something etched into the cement floor on the way to his cell:
A
LAKE
A
LANE
A
LINE
A
LONE
When Mickey goes behind the bars, he lies down on the bed feeling inside his pocket and rubs the edges of the ESC key.
*
The next day, Officer lets Mickey out in the yard so he can get some fresh air. Everyone else is at work, so the big field is empty.
Mickey walks over to the fence to see if he can spot Birdie, but she’s not there. He thinks, Birdie turned into a seed? Suddenly, he notices he’s standing on the garden bed and jumps backward hoping he didn’t hurt anything.
Mickey kneels down and straightens out the soil he mixed up. Feeling the dirt, Mickey thinks he would also enjoy being a flower very much. Maybe, he thinks, if he eats soil like Birdie, he can be a flower too.
Mickey begins shovelling fistfuls of the soil into his mouth and swallowing as much as he can. Fistful after fistful after fistful. Until he can’t fit anymore in, but he keeps trying to smush it all down, deep down, to the bottom of his tummy.
Fistful after fistful after fistful.
Later, they find Mickey, and while they’re dragging his body to one of the holes in the yard, he’s smiling with eyes toward the sky,
and flowers protruding out the mouth.
Mickey the Bricky is out of print from The Blasted Tree Store.
Featured by The Blasted Tree: April 22, 2020
Jimmy t. Cahill
Contributing Author
Mickey the Bricky by Jimmy T. Cahill is a Blasted Tree original short story.
ISBN [Digital]: 978-1-987906-56-1
Cover Design by Kyle Flemmer