Lunch Break Stories: Tea with Richard D. James

Written on my lunch break for those on theirs...


Tea with Richard D. James

There is a constant beat drumming away in my mind. It's a dark & devious beat, an abstract one that could pass as a
soundtrack to a nightmare. I wake with it and sleep with it. It consumes me at times, dictating the rhythm of footsteps I take or words I say. It is a horrible reminder of the person I am and, at the same time, the reason I AM who I am.

This is my plight, and the fiery HATE that each sound creates is yours.


I will probably never die. I mean, until I reach my millionth cigarette or my liver goes out or I try to heat up my lava lamp on the stove and it explodes and the shards pierce my heart.. or something. But, no matter how much I kill, I am far too smart to die sober.

I find an apartment with its window open in a part of town where heroes are rarely seen. No cops, no a$$clown heroes, no crackhead trolls, so I take a leap directly through the window. As my feet hit the carpeted floor, they do so in unison with THE BEAT. I have no weapons. I look around: kitchen knives and an array of sharp things from Ikea, decorative katana, wow a chainsaw (what the hell is a chainsaw doing in an apartment in the city?), too many to choose from. Katanas are played out, the knives from IKEA look a few weeks old so they're probably too dull to cut, and if a chainsaw isn't good enough for Bruce Willis, I mean, come on.

My hands, I'll just choke this random [censored] with my hands, I think. So, a few more steps and I'm up against the bedroom door. I turn the knob and push it in and boom, there's a guy standing there staring at me. No fear, no flee, no look of suprise, this guys eating Cheetos and looking at me as if I'm a bad episode of I Dream of Jeanie.

"Wth??," I say. At this point, my whole scary pose is relaxed and my enormous cobra-sized arms are half shrugging.

And he just stands there popping freakin' cheetos in his mouth. I'm not mad, so don't think I am. No, I won't let myself get mad at this guy. UNTIL he finally starts sucking his orange-painted fingertips and giving me this stare like he's Suge Knight or something.

I'm mad now. I charge. My footsteps are fierce, in unison with THE BEAT. I pull back my cobra-sized arm as far as it'll go and all he does is look down at his fingertips, as if the orange goodness that is Cheeto powder is THAT good that he has to stare. I hate when people do that.. Anyway, as I'm about to swing, I notice he's no longer holding the bag of cheetos. His arm reveals a katana. A quick step right and a slight motion of his hand and I've got a missing cobra-sized arm. So I drop immediately as if the pain cancels out all my furioius momentum. And, as I lay there clutching my shoulder sans the arm, he bends over me and just looks at me until everything fades into black.

A few hours later and everything fades in. I'm hunched over in a chair, not even tied up, drinking tea with Richard D. James. Who is he? I wouldn't have known if not for the enormous, wall-sized poster of his face behind him with the words "Aphex Twin". My eyes strain to be able to see the whole poster its so big. They retrain on the little man in the seat next to me and its the face on the poster. Now he's drinking tea, his pinky straight up into the air and taking dainty sips like you'd imagine a schoolgirl would.

"Tea, mate?" he asks.

He's so nonchalant, so casual and calm and collected.. I'd use another c-word to describe him, but, as you can tell, I'm a gentleman and a ladies man.

"I don't want tea!! I want my arm back!!" I demand.

Calmly, he punches me in the face - "Sure, please, tea would be excellent," I say. I wanted some anyway.

So we drink and talk, we laugh and cry, we beat Halo 2 together, it was great. He tells me that his dreams and nightmares are important to him and that, not only do they inspire him to make music, they also seem to fortell strange future events that often come true. He tells me this was fortold. He tells me he knows a lot about me and that he is the only one who can cure me of my "musical disease". And, its not until I hear his music until I know what he means.

He walks to his CD player and says, "I'm going to heal you."

This prostetic feaux J3sus is going to heal me? Okay, sure, he can play a good game of Halo 2 and he's got a scruffy beard like EuroJ3sus himself, but there's no way he can take away the pain of THE BEAT.

And then it plays...

And it scares me. I'm 6'6, 450+ lbs, I've eaten metal, its not like I scare easy. This, though, frightens me. And, just as soon as the fear comes, it goes, and epiphany approaches.

My eyes lighten up and I look to him with the eyes of a disciple, "Ooooh, I get it, this music is like the music in my head. The music is going to do some reverse-polarity thingamawhatsit on my head!!"

He smiles and shakes his head Bugs Bunny-style, "No, this music is my hammerin' music."

"Wait...wha-?" SMACK

And from that day on, I never heard THE BEAT again. I still listen to his music here and there, between my trips to the hospital where I'm a clown for cancer-filled kids. But, I only listen to it because it reminds me of the time I had tea with Richard D. James.

THE END

http://www.lclark.edu/~piolog/20011109/aphex.jpg
Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin

Great lunch break story. Nice introduction to a very strange hero(?). I enjoyed reading it...you should post more often.
If you have I'm sorry I missed them. Thank you for sharing it.

Your story kept me wondering what would happen next from start to finish. Usually I skip a lot when reading in this section...but yours I read all the way through. I wanted to know what happened becuase I couldn't predicit the ending like most stories.

Nice work!

Hey, thanks a lot for the feedback, and thank you to those who PM'd me. I'll try to write some more.

- AGoodfriend