THE GOLD—OR SILVER—RUSH by Z.H. Gill

THE GOLD—OR SILVER—RUSH by Z.H. Gill

hi. i get one hand to type. gf nailed other hand to desk. through it. looks bad. painful. less painful now. been like this for two days. got tired of watching the dvds she left. so now, typing. she turned off internet. can’t guess any neighbor passwords. dvds she left were the movie rumor has it and the movie open range. kevin costner in both. directed the latter. i watched open range three times, that ones actually pretty good. great final fight, big gun battle, nevertheless i have grown tired of it already, as anyone in my situation would. anyway, i am stuck. hand looks bad. i think infected. i think just marginally infected. i will be ok. i tried to slowly get the nail out with my other hand, my new typing hand, but it hurts too much, in too far. can’t take apart the desk. too sturdy and nailed into the floor. that was my doing. haha. oops. she nailed my right hand and i am right-handed, not ideal. i mean that was part of her plan. makes it harder for me. less chance of escape. but either way, desk so sturdy no escape unless she left me a tool. i tried for a minute. using the closed laptop itself to pry the nail out but the nail is in too deep and the laptop just not the right shape for prying. she left me no other tool. and when she takes the laptop to charge it i have no tool. zero tools. recordscratch how did it end up like this. recordscratch sam you are a strong if not outright burly man and here you are halfcrucified to your desk. pathetic. she drugged me and dragged me here, i think. regardless, i woke up here. there was an earthquake last week. no real damage to the house but it diverted the stream in our backyard. the small bed cracked a bit and dried out completely in two days in this heat. then it sparkled, which means gold or silver. maybe a lot of it. i’m not too mad just tired of pissing and shitting in a bucket. also hand maybe infected. and it’s my dominant hand i need it. gf mostly a nice girl. she owes some money to some people. refuse to help her with this, bad people who don’t deserve her money or any money and she was foolish too. she’s hoping she finds 50k in gold out there. she is prospecting, i can hear her. she has a highend metal detector and my tools. she won’t tell me what she finds, she’s highly skilled at bluffing and i’m in a windowless room. my desk is in my study, the only windowless nontoilet in the house. again my intentions get the best of me. i was preventing distraction and now i prevent my escape. cannot signal to the outside. not that i’d want ron coming to my rescue. ron the neighbor. i think he put it into her head a while back that there could be 50k of gold and/or silver in the creek. he’s the worst. he’s not that bad. just gets to me sometimes. sort of fellow who sets rules for others but has no intention actually following them himself. sort of fellow triggered by any outdoor revelry but then throws his own party and it’s the worst one of the year on the street by far. and by worst i mean best. i am jealous a little. but no party on a street like this, with families and dogs wandering about and chickens wandering about, should last for three days. me and the gf attended two of three and then we could not take it anymore. not that we didn’t want to. our bodies simply quit, they caved in. but why am i typing about ron. 

late now. gf took the computer away to charge and only just returned it. i hid this document in a file of my old ms paint comix so i doubt she saw it. not that i have written anything so bad about her, if anything i have been especially generous with her, given the situation. i do expect the relationship to last though. we will seek a professional and talk it out and get through it and if she does manage to strike it rich and satiate her creditors i do expect all fronts of our relationship to improve. i know shes been distressed. she has trouble sleeping. which means i have trouble sleeping. hoping she finds gold instead of silver, it’s worth, what, 75 or 100 times silver something like that. i mean who knows. who knows what she finds. a big juicy gem. i don’t think there are gems in these hills here, no idea where the closest juicy gem-containing hills are but if thats a thing here it would be a thing for my gf. she gets herself into situations. not as extreme as this one is but she’s attracted trouble all her life. her mother always says so. she has pled with me to stay with her. my gf says that isn’t fair of her mother but i do see where her mother is coming from. people have been cruel to my gf, her exlovers and her socalled friends and especially her creditors, they are the worst of an admittedly pretty bad bunch. at least we own the house. by which i mean i do. her mother is a kind enough woman. she is living here now too actually. but she is out of town. on the star trek cruise out of san diego. you get to see the ruins of tulum with michael dorn in tow. she asked us to come along but my gf said it would look bad to her creditors if she left the country and also my passport has lapsed. you used to only need your birth certificate to go into mexico, i remember my dad ordering a copy of mine and folding it up in his breast pocket to present to the guards as we crossed the pedestrian border crossing into tijuana. my dad used his drivers license, that worked too. we drank fantas at the tijuana kfc because it was hot as it is here right now. i am rambling, at this point i am rambling. the pain comes in waves. infection for sure. but it looks ok. don’t think i will lose the hand or anything. it’s late now, i know the time because the computer says the time at the top. past 11-30. haven’t heard her prospecting in a while. hope she is good. she said she was sorry and that she loved me when she returned the laptop just a bit ago but she didn’t exactly stick around after that either. she looked tired. i can always tell. and like i said, a night of thorough sleep is rare for her. in another window i’m playing minesweeper, i was already quite good at it but after this ordeal i am fucking great. given the recent trend i wonder if there will be a hollywood movie depicting the invention of minesweeper.

fell asleep during my fourth viewing of open range, annette bening was saying something about horses. computer must have run out of juice as i slept and it’s full now so guessing once again my gf avoided the solace of sleep. her mother comes back today maybe tomorrow. soon. unless she met someone in mexico and stayed but even if she did meet someone i suspect she would bring him here and he would be so appalled finding me halfcrucified to my desk that he’d return home immediately, he would think, i will remain with whatever it is i know already. gf cooked me breakfast, problem is she cannot for shit. undercooked eggs overcooked potatoes. ate each morsel entirely and greedily. i hear her prospecting again. means she probably has not found anything worthwhile or maybe it means she has found much of consequence and must keep going, like i said, she is quite the fourflusher. she has told me little and offered no real indication of her progress. my hand is basically unfeeling now, it is basically numb. looks awful. smells awful now too. gf swapped my piss/shit bucket out as i slept at least and maybe that is why the sordid smell of my flesh is so prevalent here in my study now. i am so bored now that i am contemplating asking/begging my gf for more drugs the drugs she initially drugged me with. i will sleep through the rest of this mess. i will dream then it will be done—worse has happened to me! 


Z.H. Gill was approved for a new apartment today; his writings have appeared in Maudlin House, Triangle House, Expat, Apocalypse Confidential, hex literary, Forever Magazine, HAD, Hobart, and Rejection Letters.

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