WE were sitting out the heavy wait that had become our Friday nights of late. Our silent company giving the air substance. Slowing time until it was thick enough for even the faintest brush of cotton to ring a shrill, piercing alarm throughout the small apartment. And that is what happened. It came on as a slow rolling tide in the night. She issued forth such a steady, controlled breath, as not to disturb the settled debris that blanketed our luxurious sarcophogas. Until then, my selfish ego was contentedly lulled into lethargy by the idea of a friend in hell. A cohort in captivity. But this angel enchained sighed a sirens swansong that spoke both of dedication and suffering. Love and sacrifice. All in one perfectly pitched puff. Her pursed lips revealed a fire that swelled inside her. A long, smooth intensity that scorched the thread of my patient tolerance. Guilt came on unexpectedly, like a silent dragon in the dark, waiting to strike.
My tongue twitched a spoken spasm. It writhed, lashing back and forth in its cavernous confines. Sounds stumbled out, rolling rhythmically into a stutter. Language rediscovered itself through fossilized ruins of disconnected syllables. Scattered strata of an archaic sentence structure carefully excavated. Mined and refined. Dusted and polished restoration of vocational vernacular.
"Let's go."
The first two words that have ever bypassed all of the censors and conformed my mouth to their escape before an automatic sensory shutdown. Vocal chords must have been struck by invisible hands on an isolated island in the back of my mind. Leaving two confused receivers to sort through the rubble of the attack for some sort of black box full of answers. But alas, I am red-handed with the weight of the medium. Luckily, she plays the control in this newly constructed lab that I may play off her reactions until it blows up in my face. She is putting on her coat.
As I keep face and let my fluttering hand take the keys to our freedom, analysis of the words continues.
'Let's go.' Let us go. Who is 'us', powerful enough to momentarily take me over? And to whom would someone with such power be requesting a 'going'? Ours were the only ears in the room and so we roll. The new blood pumpling through my warming body suggests that the catalytic conversation piece was a godsend. There is even a moment where I conjecture that we conjured a spirit through the ouija board in my throat. Whatever it was, I am now closing the locked door behind us.
As new ground is tread, we follow the thread which turns out to be ignited by sheer will. I've accepted the responsibility of those words, still floating fresh, that lit this fuse that we must refuse over and over, lest detonation ensue. And after what seems like forever, a message is relayed like pavement over the foundation of 'Let's go'.
"Where are we going?" she deftly inquires, with a fluent grace that can't be imitated.
Her voice has the opposite effect on me than 'mine' did back at home. The self-inspection is cut short and introversion makes an exit out of the ether, tagged onto her line. She effortlessly executes each earshot with the precision of a delicate hammer, sharpening my now needed senses, led by a hearing as in a courtship ritual out of order, determining my state as sound and fit for society in full sensuality of the outside.
'Where are we going?'
Her honors sentence still rings as she slams the hammer one last time and the jury grants my senses free reign to take in my newly realized environment: the world.
"Out."
We've descended the stairway from heaven and it feels good to clip those burdenous wings from our now limitless stage.
"Oookay..."
She's so good to me. But it's time to shape up.
The Mazda Coupe XL wades the asphault ocean for my keystroke to tune its engine. And boy does she sing. Carcall resonates to a purr. My ears are overfed. Eardrum head is loose and flabby. Tighten up.
"Sorry. I bet you're hungry."
Her engine growls in response, followed by a cherry blush. She is all ears and she needs a wax. So I do. I wax lighthearted, so as to shine.
"How about seafood?"
I catch her eye as she bats them through left field.
My mitt bites down.
She quips. "I'll eat any food I can see."
Too cute.
Shift to D. I've got a hunger drive. Depress the deep down desire to diet.
"Captain D's?"
"Row my boat, sailor."
The empty parking lot gets a taste of us, awash with trash, thick oil slicks and half-eaten fish sticks. We drive-thru five new value platters dipped in batter deep fried side don't-skimp-on-the-shrimp quarter pounder of flounder clean slate shark bait plate. And our wallets make plenty of room for just desserts.
Both exhausted, we leave the captain with a gaseous exchange. Us full, our car empty. Both broke. She breaks down roadside and blows off some steam. I don't mind 'cause it cleans the upholstry. Her face turns a different shade of red. Mine goes white. Like she's sucking me dry. Under a blue sky. I feel so patriotic. Overweight V-8, big block, bick cock. Blood soaked soil displaces oil. The land of the free builds the national debt. Now we're starving bottom feeders in an empty tank with a useless pump.
She cools off, pops some Tums and we vacate this hollow husk like pacified parasites.
Through dry, well-deserving sighs in digesting the main course, our plot thins, leaving us ghostriding the coast through roadblocks.
Outside an occupied truckstop restroom, she mutters "What a waste", grimacing at the ground.
I find the errorproof object of her objection. A pregnancy test displaying subtraction. But I know she was only talking about the price tagged on its face. She can't even afford clothes, not that she'd have room anyway, with all the closet skeletons. Clothes hangers are only good for free abortions to her. And right now, maybe stealing a car.
A trucker gives her kissy cyst-lips and her hesitation almost scares me when a dangling hubcap keychain walks out of the restroom. I snarl the waddling, road-lonely diesel grease bag off her back as she runs inside.
Propped up on shaky bedsore bones, I stare off into this garage mirage, breathing in the fumes and zoning out on the idling engine noise. Inside the trance I become lighter and catch a ride on a passing heat wave oscillating upward. Wavelengths stretch out thinner and thinner with the atmosphere. I am thinner than air and leave behind my oxygen dependence. I am sneaky, invisible lightwave radiation still waving the long goodbye to Earth. Just as I approach escape speed, reaching out to a nearby calling star that I suspect to be my long departed grandmother, cruel, demanding gravity returns with her barbwire lasso. Disoriented, I keel over and plead with my gag reflex to keep Captain D down. Barely swayed into submission, I slowly open my eyes to a hubcap pendulum that hypnotizes the captain's crew out in a tidal wave of vomit, swabbing the deck of her checkerboard Sketchers.
"What the fuck?!"
My angel reserves her more colorful vocabulary for occasions such as these. An impasted mosaic of partially digested sea creatures are now Jackson Pollocked about her shoes. Upon returning the restroom key, I sticky finger an apologetic box of Junior Mints that will also hopefully mask the stench which is increasing with the setting sun. The box almost gets a smile out of her when she grabs it and throws me a hose.
When I notice her start to eye more truckers, I try to shine some light on the situation, reminding her of when she liked to paint her shoes in high school. She just tells me to keep spraying. My eyes start to go swirly as they follow chunky little reminders of our earlier binge down a foamy stream from the banks of her splattered heels to a collection in the floor drain of the gas station lot. The small, processed, fried, and chewed-up fish remnants busily reenact their original duties prior to death by commerce, as if they are ghosts of the sea, unaware of their embarrassing fates.
I find myself getting lost downstream and struggle to fight the current. I grab onto a cigarette butt log for leverage and pull myself back into my body. Close my eyes, get reoriented, and look up to see a gas station attendant, a Slim Jim wedged between a gap in his brown teeth, slackjawed at the figure wailing in front of him as if his life were at stake.
"Whutchoofergettatakeyermedicine,bowah??"
I make a note that this alien seems to be of an inferior race and then realize that she's gone. And barefoot...
Her exposed sole is too vulnerable here. Jack Daniels slivers and litter the lot. I inspect the eighteen wheeler BJ assembly line and an Asian hooker herd doing their rounds. And I remember her phenomenal sixth sense for easy money. I stagger up out of Fish Puke Lake and bump into the alien.
"Whydonchoojus'takealoadoffmister."
It casually releases a noxious odor of concentrated death that singes my nose hair. I make a one-winged bee line for the trucks, swerving side to side, shaking off disgust. One of the 'love-you-long-times' spots me, mistaking me for an apparent gold mine, and scurries over.
The humming reverberation of multiple idling engines begins to lull be away but I fight for presence. I'm focused. One foot in front of the other, toward the gang of towering, grinning grills, laughing at my losing struggle against the dream. The glass gravel floor is too forgiving and I'm walking in place. The fine china vagina is gaining. The grinding, mechanical chorus line of locusts shine as the horizon is set ablaze. The dark looming silhouettes of Budweiser caps and pork chops sit patiently in the bellies of their subservient beasts as the world casts me out. The disasterous loop I'm stuck in gets faster and shorter, turning into a knot. Suffocating my existence. I'm having a heart attack!... Going to crack!... Tapped on the back!... Tapped on the back?
A small, slender appendage reluctantly hammers my shoulder. Instinctively, I pivot to confront the circuit breaker tapper, who only appears to share her face until I allow myself the vulnerable adaptation to circumstance. A rapid succession of blinks. This ritual assumes the function of a strobe to and from black ground control and the unexpected outcome product of multiple complex variables. The unsuckable grape Slurpee clenched in her whitening grasp solves for X what I suspected to be the more succulent solution basking amid the sweat sauna inner sanctum of the Exxon rectum. The chintzy chinese whore hisses, removing her money-making mask to allow the reptillian skin within to breathe, and recoils her business end back to pack her poormouth and fulfill her cum quota.
"Where were you going?" she inquires, stoically stroking her straw and musing over my misdirected course.
The sun is now but a memory, burnt into the minds cornea, as the moth myriad falls into orbit around dim electric buzzing bulbs.
"I was looking..." I look down to the sound of squishy, wriggling toes in soaked shoes. "Where'd you get that?" I divert to the unaffordable syrapy sustenance in her hand.
"The guy gave it to me" she glows. I suppress the presumption of his possible innuendo and just hope that she doesn't suspect the same.
"That was... nice of him."
"Well, I did suck his cock first."
"Goddamn it, Sarah!..." Sarah. Her name suddenly pops into my head, as if for the first time. Was it the first time? I realize it was, as she starts to materialize. My sanity double-crosses me. I become the center of distrust in my own life. She was... "You were..." I choke, desperately searching for distraction, but my foresight fails me, a black eclipse following my center field everywhere I look. Only my periphery is clear. Frustrated and irrational, I try to chase it, jerking my head and eyes in every direction to no avail.
"Stop." The black hole has her voice. I obey it, fighting curiosity and the natural tendency to discern the fuzzy objects in the corners of my eyes.
"Were you... ever... real?" My trembling discord is a sonar to my deepest fears.
"Yes."
So maybe I'm not crazy. Unless she's still not there. The voice I hear could be projected from a subconscious ventriloquist.
"You just never saw me."
Impossible. I remember... I remember... someone?... with... dark hair? I think.
"Some kind of lustful jealous rage has opened your eyes. And seeing me has blinded you."
Something moves in the periphery. Is it her? Dammit!
"Why?! I loved you! How could--"
"Shhhh." A gentle, cool breeze. "You had to love me. It was the closest you could get to loving yourself."
This sentimental dramatization tires me. A faint repetative electronic noise is borne from the east and gradually escalates. With it, the black hole brightens. I take slow, unsure baby steps forward until a silky thin veil stops me. The beeping hovers above me now. I pinch the smooth, airy material and delicately stretch it, producing a vertical slit that splits wider and wider like a dilating snake eye. Then I walk through it.
The membranous eye mucous fails to crust over and seal the hatch. The glowing liquid cloth drapes let loose a ripple as dawn wins again, whispering her secrets through a cracked window. The exhaled morning mantra induces peace and reflection upon the pane of the night. A strange dream begins to resurface, when the alarm barges in with the pitched wailing ignorant voice of machines only interested in productivity. My hand, endowed with individuality through routine, interprets my mind with a violent clockwork evisceration of time. The techno-illogical war draws even, as General Electric sounds the cry every morning to wake up and work while records and blueprints are burned and patient P.O.W.'s are beheaded. Subtle hair-triggers are recognized in the man-made maze of the rat race; small lightning flashback recalls of faded fancies still nestled in the night. But time is money, rendered through restlessness and wasted in memory banks. So we spend our starbucks, black fuel for the Bronco that won't last eight seconds.
I speed along the highway and punch the second clock of the day, hoping for a K.O. but only getting hot under the white collar. Heat rises under the gunfire, signalling the race between numbers in our pockets and on the wall. The composed monetary monotony is soundtracked to the tap dance that my spindly fingers perform, setting fire to the keyboard. I am one of the eight limbs of my mother corporation, assigned to weave firm, taut, sticky jargon across the internet that will lure unsuspecting surfer flies onto our plate for us to legally bind under our venomous contractions. My masters many hungry red eyes cast their baleful gaze across the company as his gaping maw bears its sharpened, dripping fangs. If the leeches make the allotted cut, then they are allowed to suckle green blood treacle from the calloused corporate nipple. Friendly posted policies loom over my station, reminding me of my daily goal to dissuade Little Miss Muffet from settling for her stiff, chiropractically damaging tuffet and fatty, carbohydrated curds and whey, without scaring her away. I've got a knack for scenting banners that afford us thousands of hits a day. The trick is not to think.
Lunch comes around and productivity is good. I reward myself, selfishly sacrificing time with a Fast Break Shake™. It is a working man's meal, supplying all of the essential vitamins and nutrients in a convenient, soluable powder. Just add milk! I respect the makers of Fast Break Shake™ for their proven customer care concerns. For instance, in order to provide the appropriate serving of nutrition, the consistency of their formula has always been a bit thick, thus putting added stress on the throat and hindering a speedy consumption. So, their new and improved product includes the patented Throat Distender™. Similar to the speculum utilized in the medical field, this device, comprised of a small non-allergenic plastic adjustable ring, is wedged just above the esophagus and sized to the customers personal preference, expanding the passageway and curbing the overprotective muscle reflexes of the throat. This ingenious innovation was a breakthrough in overcoming yet another fault of the flesh and activating our stubborn evolution.
The lunchtime ritual ignites a newfound inspiration within me just in time for the shiny, polished, stacked and starched Master Suit to confront me with today's company concerns.
"The Typhoid account grant mock-up struck the board with a lack of adequate aesthetic presentation sensibilities. I'm afraid that the PEARL 132 stationary was of a thinner stock and lighter opacity than is standard for the company. I know that you are capable of achieving a better performance level than this. I'm gonna need you to attend a couple workshops next week to better communicate our expectations from you and to direct a-dant, dedant, de-dant dedant dedant dedant..."
His voice trails off on a well-paced gallop to the theme from Pink Panther and I respectfully humor him in meeting his big-balled ego driver's apparent requirement for a sturdy whipping post audience. But, while my body assumes any position that the boss pleases, my attention is diverted to the glowing bun. A small bound ball of gold gilded strands bobs and bounces along the upper edges of the cuddled cubicles in the back of the room. Seemingly content with its simple situation, my pupils happily bounce along with it. Wondering what it will do once it reaches the end of its cubicle course, my questions are soon answered and and an illusion is unmasked. The glowing bun reveals it's driver as she emerges from behind the wedged wandering wall hedge.
"...dedant, dedant, deadant, deadlines are not supposed to be hard to meet as long as you remain focused..."
His mouth is still making the chattering motion, predictably excreting business dialect, memetic devices raping my ears into conformity and unquestioning servitude.
But she... I've seen her before. So silently demanding. A presence that also ensnares my fellow wage slaves as she passes. Their heads turn, almost unconsciously, helplessly, as her high-heeled bobbing bun follows its determined destiny into the printing room. She's gone and noise continues. Clicking, beeping, whirring, painstakingly synchronous communication flows uninterrupted within the sharp-edged office jungle.
"... So I am putting myself on the line for you because I know that you won't let this company or me down."
I play the perfect product of this perverted experiment in corporeal corporate terror. I am surrounded by accuracy and mechanical precision. The line is blurred from between wires and veins. The tightly threaded tendons and vast surfeit of circuitry frame the neural network seeding deep inside my head. The euphoric hum of unhindered machine processes extricates all human folly and proves its very futility. I allow my still natural body to give in to the influence that its environment induces. Hairline faults form on the surface of my grinding teeth under increasing pressure. A tendency for survival tenses my tender jaw, locking it down. I pull a piece of my lip into the tooth grit as sacrificial flesh fodder. A gentle trickle escapes from the corner crevice of my mouth. Like the mouth of a newborne river, streaming honest red. My martyred lip bleeds out the poison of lies and artificiality. A scarlet lettered line displayed across my chin continues its lonely discourse down. My blood is my redemption. My freedom. Baptismal salivated salvation from the beast before me.
"...de-dant, dedant, dedant, d-your lip! You're bleeding. Why don't you go take care of--"
My escape root canal flows, dripping onto my shackled noose tie and ironed, pristine white collar. I walk the line to the restroom, but am stopped dead, sidetracked by the printing room. Her glowing bun spotlights me like the criminal that we all are. Bathed in blood and light, I am absolved. She holds the key to replace the ink cartridge in the copy machine. But I know that it really unlocks my blood cell. White blood sells in this business but she takes me off the market. She reloads the munitions belt so that the ink can run like a shadow, unnoticed.
I approach the bun like approaching the bench. I must go through the motion. Waive emotion. She's my confessional.
"You work in accounting, right?"
"Yes." She smiles and, just like that, it kills me. Breaks me from the prison of my old self.
It's nice to finally see the face of the reaper. "It's nice to finally meet you."
All along I've been the arm that serves the beast, doing time from my station in His service. Meanwhile, she has always taken the fall for me. She is His mistress. Accounting for my wins and losses. Reaping the bounty of war. Catering to Him. Feeding him the grapes of wrath.
"My name is 36101. I'm one of the webmasters for the server."
"Hi, my name is Sarah."
Sarah... That name, it sounds... familiar?
"You know you're bleeding?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Lips get really dry. I was just on my way to the men's room. I think this job is starting to take it's toll." And here comes the toll bridge. "Listen..." And I'm all in. "Would you like to go out sometime?"
Seconds are like cinder blocks. All of the expressive parts of my body cringe in an automated attempt to retract passed action. Muscles tighten and harden as if to prepare for a wracking, ignoring the nearly one-sided odds against physical defense actually being necessary. My mind, specifically the egotistical part, being the lone soldier in this war of time, looks down its lobe, deeming my pathetic, knotted stomach a coward.
Her lips part, revealing the dark cavernous abyss within. Stalagmites and stalagtites guard the entrance to her holy receptacle. Pure white glistening stones, threatening daring adventurers, almost erotically. Her dimples stab inward, forcing the surrounding aftershock of soft cheek outward and pushing her bottom eyelids up into a near squint.
A lip reader would already start the fireworks, her grinning beginning foretelling a positive postition.
"Yeah, I'd love to!"
My heart swells like a burping ocean pumping a double and skimming the inside of my ribcage.
"I'm free tonight..."
I gag. A traffic jam of over-anxious words collect in my throat, her trail-off enciting an unexpected self-abusive riot, frustrated at the seemingly pointless tedium between response and the overaged idea waiting to be picked up from its shrinking carriage.
"I'll pick you up at seven?"
"Sounds great!"
She gives me her number and I become a numerologist, clinging to this newfound cosmic code.
Then I become greedy. I unplug and set myself in the incubator for the rest of the work day. Sure, my body is still busy, but time and effort are set free to fly like boiling bubbles rising in the hot tub of the wait. It would be heresy to give it any weight with more preoccupied diatribal documentation.
Hours pass away without burial.
Then the whistle blows and the bell tolls, as over-arched hovering hunchbacks crack, bloodshot monitors rest their browsers, and overheating hard drives are hushed.
I find my car pulling into my driveway and repossess my stiffened corpse.
Home.
Inside, I'm a little surprised that my body managed the ride all the way here on cruise control. I try not to imagine the countless other discontinued robots shooting their hollowpoint coffins down the freeway in the dark, like misfired neurons down the cracked spine of a nervous city. We are electrons, swarming around the inner hive queen nucleus, gathering honey on our sticky situations and unconsciously hoping for a collision to wake up our receding nerves and remind us before...
I locked my keys in the car. I jimmy a window and break into my own house, then let my mind migrate from the oncoming storm and prepare for my date. I build a shelter around my plans and butress against the heavy, merciless rains of chaos. I must salvage control and devise responses to any possible obstructive nuisance. I've learned by now that fate's hand pulls me down the most treacherous of roads and Murphy's Law enforcers are always on my tail. The blueprinted road map of detours is laid out in my headquarters when two knocks folds it up. She's here.
It's time for me to log on and move all my spam to trash folders. My hard drive is clean and hungry. Just the way it should be. My monitor dilates to let her in. She's hungry too and I ask if she minds driving. She hands me the jingling hardwhere enchained to weighted dice and I hope it's not a stick. Her kitten purrs, I handle her wheel with kid gloves, and we small talk our way to a full lot.
Midway through an all-too-formal dining on cheap conversational appetizers and slices of mundane work life, we unconditionally coordinate the decomposition of this unwarranted facade. The last thing we want to speak of is the only thing that binds us. Work. In perfect unison, we halt the raising of our someteenth glass of cheap burgundy, stripping the comfort of repetitious contention from our confused and disoriented lips. We withdraw our bodies from the dependence of the social pantomime of etiquette and read each others mirrored expressions of honest impatience. I get the check and a doggy bag and she grabs the bottle of wine.
A fast yet timeless, open-windowed adrenalin coursed drive ascends our new emerging frame up a winding earth slope, far above the scum of the synchronized social pond, for air.
The car door hinge squeaks and she takes the first breath of the joint. Sitting atop the hot hood, overlooking the sparkling incandescence of a cracked crystal city, I am, instead, fixed on the relieving exposure of her comfortable composure. We found the trap door and dropped the architectural anchor of artificial civility. The clear, light air sneaks into my pores and loosens my tight tired tissue. The nights whisper is translated into chills and I long to leave with the everpassing breeze. She passes me the torch and I inflate my balloon like a match to the moon. Awestruck, I take a hit and blow. Expired proof of fire spirals forth from my forgiving insides. Smoke trails steadily dissolve and get caught up in clouds, straddling the stratosphere. I pass the cherried star stick back, and our likely poisoned minds meld, taking flight to follow the night on the red eyes.
Brakelights stare back at us like fallen stars sucked down by the black hole city to bleed. Time slows, stretching them into vermillion serpents, circulating the varicose veins of a congested system. Bright pinhole pockets are nestled in the black blanket overhead, searching for felled eggshells amidst the miscarriage of stillborn memories.
As I feel like screaming out to them that "I'm still here!", the light in my deepest, sizeless center shimmers like the discordant dance of a candle flame. I feel so far away from those great burning gods. But, as I look back at her, power is proven by the stolen twinkle imprint in the bottom of her eye. I watch it well up bigger and brighter and I fear that it will burst. I wait until it swells over the lip of her lid and lashes lash out, then I desperately dive for the drop. My palm intercepts the falling liquid glow and it seethes into my skin.
The bubble pop frees the tiny atomic acid spirit, drilling out filling, boring meat, sizzling curling nerve endings that pitch urgency to my vexed cortex. The four alarm electric clock hot wired to my hand surges, tensing tendons and buckling my rusted knuckles to ball an implosive fist. The holy, tear-stained stigmata hides, trying to eat itself.
This all happens in the blink of her eye, which opens to collect the writhing distortions washed across my leather-plated face.
She screams and the earth gives away. Face to face on the banks of the abyss, we feel the land begin to slide. The car beneath us lurches and the dark death valley spreads open miles below. Mother nature inhales and wins the umbilical tuf-of-war. We take in our last brief breath as the air pulls her hair. We are destined like dry leaves heeding the call of the fall. Content just where we are, I kiss her before the ground does. The jagged rocks play games with our bodies and our entrails are strewn about by chance. And finally we are free.
"Make sure the car is locked."
We stand, necks arched, at the foot of the stairs. This spot always triggers that lingering sentiment of reluctance to return. Like a soldier discharged early, I can't sit still while my brothers are dying. The uphill battle starts with the first step, my rubberband conscience pulling on my back. The snowball effect works against me as my feet turn into puddles of soft mud. I know she feels the same, but she carries on, scooping me up in piles by the porch. We've ascended back to our vacant apartment, to feed it again, with purpose and hope. To pin our skin to the walls. To shed our hair in clumps in the corner. To peel back old wounds and quench the merciless page.
We... get comfortable.
Later that night, as we sit down to dinner, the spell of redundance is cast. But my acute prescience expected this calling card of death. I cloak myself in pretense, playing victim to the droll. My mask hugs me like a familiar friend. So warm. She turns on the T.V. The static looks convincing. I dare the guide to pick a channel. I hope he hasn't gotten to her. Give me a sign, baby. She looks just like her mask. As seen on T.V. She scratches. I'm losing her. I spoon some peas. She's sinking. Her eyes glaze like an antique store window. (Drop the spoon.) Her breathing slows. Her head droops. (Drop the spoon!)
The metallic shot shatters the ice.
"Aaaahhh!!"
She chokes as her possessor flees. Her shock frightens her. She's back. I shouldn't have waited so long.
"Sorry. The spoon..."
I kneel down to pick it up and bear my humility.
She reaffirms my faith and shakes off her defense. She turns off the T.V.
We come to our senses, embrace reality, and smile.
"Whataya say we move?"
"Ok!" She doesn't hesitate. "Where?"
"I mean, let's not stop."
She looks down ant to the left in tense consideration... "Let's do it!"
She's getting closer, but she's still in a world of plans. There is a well-learned agoraphobic little girl deep down that I must wake up.
I enter the dialog of symbols and I pick up the phone. I disconnect the line and hold it above my head slowly as not to freak her out.
"What are you--"
Then I throw the phone at the clock with a smile on my face, destroying time and space.
"What the fuck?!" She searches my eyes for some reason, confused. But somehow she knows I'm crazy and she likes it.
"You know why I did that, right?"
She plays, investigating the broken glass, gears, springs, and wires.
"Because..." Her intuition winks at her. She knows there is value at stake. "Because we don't need them."
She understands.
We lose ourselves in one another and open the new game window, limited only by thought. Nodes light up, barriers are breached and electric energy flows. I feel the grateful earth bend for me upon my path because I'm in her shoes. I smell the sweet incense of Autumn as she would. I close my eyes and cherish the security of my soft surrounding skin. My moist plush flesh is fluffed upon the delicate organic managerie inside me. My senses heighten and my loosely knit nerves wind to the surface, longing for an embrace. I am in love with my self but still am overflowing. I must share this with the world. I am the world. The true one. The evergreen tree of life. The dark spaces underneath are the ones that I occupy with you. Our shared dreams perpetuate the eternal daylight. We solitary stars that must stand strong. Porchlights of the void keeping ready for the rest. Darkness is the playground without rules. Black construction paper for us dancing strobes to cover, for she pushes when I pull and this could last all night. New moves make mockery of the envelope and any avoided foothold will taste her clicking heals. We close this movement as I dip her down on a golden bough to reenter her rhythm.
The commander of my vessel barks an order: "Darken the pupils! I want those holes to be blacker than the bleakest eclipse! Thicker than pitch in infinite twilight!"
"Man, why's the commander always so poetic?"
"Hey, I heard that, rookie!"
"Sorry sir!"
My viewfinder adjusts and I see myself in her. And my self sees me and gets homesick. Then she vomits forth my own luminescence into me.
Lots of heavy panting as we rewire our circuits and are reminded of the tribulation of incarnation. Hangover.
"My god! What did you put in our dinner?!"
I look over at my full plate that was warm hours ago
"I starve myself for you. A fast for the feast that will last. Only you could fill me up for good."
"I just mean that felt like an LSD flashback."
She stands up and her bones crack.
"Ooh man! How long were we--" She looks out the window to the rising sun. "We..."
"We kept each other up all night."
So soon she settles into the habit of forgetting. Her consciousness, like us all, yearns to return. The solidification of a developed ego, like a photo engraved in the stone mantle of time. Flipping through an album. "That's me at my sister's wedding in Alabama." No it's not. Almost. You're still here holding a picture. But I do see part of you in there, treading the shallow end of hypnosis. You've never been further outland than this. Swim to the middle of the ocean of memory and your body starts to dissolve. Don't worry. You will never have to experience this phenomenon whilst inhabiting the meat. You won't suffer the mental trauma of intentional conscious disappearance. We need each other to keep us here.
"Hellloooo?... You still in there, sailor?"
"Huh? Sorry. Guess I should crack my bones, too."
I'm always there to spin the yarn of her mind into intricate dreamcatchers and touch the insensitive clues of her blurred aura. And she always--
"You're doing it again."
"Sorry baby." She's always there to rub my face in the dirt... That's love.
"So, what do ya wanna do?"
She's there to remind me of the importance of play. To stay centered in my body and test all of its complex variable faculties. Then a glob of mashed potato mud meets my face, displaced margarine coursing down my nose. I return the jest, catapulting a spoonful of peas. A barrage of green balls pelts her. One direct throat hit quickly rolls down her shirt, conforming to her curves, and is captured by her cleavage. Feeling violated by the vegetable, her expression contorts to a mischievous grin that actually worries me. Her palm now pinching an open ketchup squeeze bottle, instinct calls me toward the door. Sensing an impending ending to an unripened food fight, my feet retreat, creeping back behind enemy lines. She lunges, the barrel of the bottled burger blood ready to address me as her deadmeat meal. I duck and cover, quivering like a calf. Her victory laugh calls off the attack and my cringe softens. Still guarding my post for a second wave, she relinqueshes her condiment cannon and assumes a catlike composure. Her four padded paws saunter over to my station, crouched by the couch. Gently, she licks the lightly salted shrapnel from my wartorn cheek. The tip of her tongue dimple, probing the shallow crater. The curious mouth muscle slug penetrates and parts the inner rim of my upper lip from its union with my gums. Helpless, my lip surrenders to invasion, purses and seals around her. Our moist mouths exchange secrets. The slimy, sensitive spies feel around and catalogue their foreign findings in these uncharted flesh caves.
Little do I know, she is focusing my mind, ounce by ounce, into her mouth. Distractions by her other parts only trigger tiny nips at my lips by her careful incisors. Once my concentrated consciousness has calculated the coordinates of each and every taste bud, I find myself wading in the seeping saliva until I am duly diluted. And, with one innocent gulp, she is quenched.
I claw at the slippery walls of the dark tunnel entrance, but what used to be fingers now splashes against her tonsils. I am helpless against the strong, unimpeded will of the reflex as her trachea tract squeezes me down faster than falling. I am a stream of consciousness after a brainstorm. Sacrificial parchment for the parched. A psychic readers digest, out-of-body dowsing rod, hydroplaning to hell. Her sewage drain opens and I become a holy diver, belly flopping into an acrid baptism in bile. The discordant torrent chemical bath rips me apart, splitting the difference like atoms, infinitely smaller. I become a million bodies halved a billion times. An irrational number equal to repeated dissolution. Thus marks the propogation of eternal genocide, as countless members are widespread, rememberance of a coagulated universe grows improbable.
Then the admirable navy admiral is discharged. But the flagellating stern of the SS Sperm presses on and the ill-fated vessel is wrecked upon the great white ovum of the ocean. And as long as this inner war debt is left unsettled, room is spared like a womb.
I sit along the shore like settling silt sinking in the sand and envy the patient yogi.
I'm almost hypnotized by the gently swaying tideline when her water breaks the pause in this seaside lamaze and this waiting room beach is breached. I jump into the water like an eager otter and paddle my way to the sick bay. Body glove intact, it is past time to act, so I follow the direction and cut the sea section. I reach inside the foam just in time to comb the beachhead. My fingers make a fist and squish a dead jellyfish. Then the sky turns back as I throw back an empty embryonic sac. At dusk, the lifeless husk is miscarried and buried. As the moon wanes, she suffers pains and this piss I tread turns red. Stagnation turns to menstruation and I ride the river of blood to the morning flood.
Bird chirps ride the radiating sun wake. My semi-consciousness deciphers the beautiful chaos chorus pattern less distinct than human ears can hear. The secret song is edited for my short-wave infrequency to pick up. The tweeting laugh of nature ridicules the overbearing monkey, with its hands clasped tightly on my ears. To hear no evil is to skip the grand crescendo and spend the morning wondering how my untranslatable operattic journal would sound. I give up describing silence and notice the warm red stain she left behind. A florescent rectangle peeks through the bathroom doorframe. I don't remember where our sloppy kiss led last night. Or if we even did. Or, in that case, if she is even... I oar myself back too far and jump out of bed.
"Sarah!"
Her name. Yes. Of course she's real. Not that I actually questioned it. I'm not crazy. It's just hard to determine what's symbolic if you don't know when exactly sleep took the reigns. The judgement trials of a narcoleptic...
"Morning!"
Her voice smells like spearmint.
"You okay?"
"Oh, yeah. Just had a... dream. Weird one."
"Hey, sorry about the spot on the bed." She spits. "Spilled some wine last night."
I spy the bottle of empty memories lieing on the floor. I pitch the subconscious shovel and recover my already half-buried dream which suddenly becomes more interpretational. Wading the red water reminds my ignored bladder to wince. She gargles listerine.
"Mind if I drain the main vein?"
"Don't be shy, sailor."
The morning piss, like all simple pleasures, is innocently inconsequencial. The midsection tension is isolated and exaggerated in a body at rest, unsettling the unconscious during dreams. Bags always want to be where they aren't. Working under stress or hungry and depressed. Content without content. Chasing illusory ideals that seem better through the fog. The trick of catharsis is played out by rapid state change. Only setting the bar higher for the next one. Birthplace of the fetish. Desensitize and deform. The virtue of instant gratification is throwing the next trip further away. The party life always burns out and reveals the true pleasure of the hunt. But until then, it feels sooo good! I shake, zip up, and flush.
"That was a long one!"
"Please, I'm revelling in emptiness right now."
But happiness is selfish. The angel jerks off the devil dog, who retreats to guilt.
"Well, I'm not. Let's go get breakfast."
I pay for breakfast as the latest manifestation of my undying debt.
Apparently the party monster is still alive somewhere underground. I stretch out abstraction with a side of Texas toast in search of the Master. Thank God for secrecy. The darkness breeds surprise. The best books start out closed.
"Read any good books lately?"
And it's those coincidences that terrify the roach in me.
"Um... I started Lord Of The Flies."
A fly, otherwise arbitrary, lands on my eggs. Those hints at psychic communication, the subtle body and the astral plane couldn't be masked by enough bait. The most stubborn survivor is the smartest fool. But God would be a fly fisher. A hook is mistrust in the trout to bite hard enough. As long as one side of me fears the big D, the other side redevises sabotage.
"I saw the movie. It was pretty good."
She tires of feigning patience. She is my greatest fear. For being such a survivor, I sure could have picked a better hiding spot for terminus. But the greatest dancers never break contact. She blows on her coffee.
"Yeah, I saw it on TV before I finished reading it. Kinda discouraged me from finishing it."
She pours a silky stream of cream that explodes into a nebulous leviathan amidst the murk. She stirs and the strands spiral and multiply into thin, osteoporositic rings of an orbital history before--
"Can I get you guys anything else?"
The waitress has egg in her hair but I try not to stare.
"No thanks. Just the check."
The pure cream is gone and all that's left is the muddy mundane mixture of the mainstream middleground sitting in stagnant--
"Hey! What's a seven letter word for 'sell division'?"
She should know this one. She's probably just testing me again.
"Retail? No wait, that's six."
"Mitosis!" A young man sitting behind her chimes in.
Mitosis? Oh, 'cell' division! I try not to look surprised. I find myself constantly thankful that people can't read my--
"Yes! It fits." She turns around to my new challenger. "Thank you!"
Defense mechanism shoots into the red. But before targeting him just because he has an easily discernable face I decide to track the source of the offense. Just as I feared. It is the etheric non-entity spirit demon known only as jealousy. The method for attack is tricky. I wish that it were as simple as passive or aggressive. Fight or flight. But no.
"No problem. I actually minored in biology in college."
I must be the pure white cream and dive into that abysmal mainstream. I must suffer the coffee grind and soil myself. The only way to exorcise the green demon is to become him completely but without losing the objective to kill myself.
"You want to come sit with us?"
Part of me feels stabbed, but it is only the demon, operating under direct orders from the ego. I... want this.
He sits next to her.
"Okay, one across..."
Why do I feel like my house is being robbed? My... hard earned...
"Request for attendance. Third letter is V..."
V... That was a cool show. I love movies about aliens. People always get so scared even thinking about them. I feel more like an alien than--
"Invitation!"
How did that movie end?... I should probably say something. Why? I don't have anything to--
"Two down..."
Whoa. I'm noticing those weird coin--
"Inside connection... Hmm, that seems kind of broad."
Say something, damn it.
"Hey, so what's your name, man?"
"Dane."
"Dane." Hand shake. "I'm Evan, and this is..."
Oh God! Oh God!!
"Sarah..." She finally says.
She looks at me, condescension defending offense.
I can't believe I blanked--
"Nice to meet you, Sarah."
"So... six letters..."
Gotta think. Get in the game. Why? What's the object? Kill the ego. Or at least jealousy. Right. Inside connection. Inside. Implode. Introvert. Inverse... Connection. Combination. Association. Cream... Solution. Mud... If you go as far inside as possible... And combine Everything... You get... Source. That's it!
"Source!"
"Oh yeah. Cool."
They both smile. Was I too excited? Did they already... know? Are they just messing with me? They aren't smiling. It's the demon. He's huge. He's a rock. I can't--
"Okay. Ten down."
Fine. Just invite Dr. Dicker inside. And make him ten times bigger than that bastard! Suck it up!
"Seven letters for 'Gulp'. Swallow."
The coincidences are screaming at me! As if it's all for me. As if I'm... creating... But why would I create...
"This is easy."
"WELL, IT'S NOT EASY FOR ME!!"
I grab something cold and...
Time skips.
He's clutching his neck...
What's wrong with...?
Vision blurs.
He's trying to... keep the red stuff... in.
There's a lot of... red... stuff.
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We've been here too long. I'm not supposed to stay anywhere very long. Coffee is cold. I don't like cold coffee. It loses all its magic.
"Next stop, Hollowbrook."
I'm on the bus. Wiping sticky stuff off my hands. Kid keeps staring. Young fanciful insect poking me in the face. I move to the back. What is this sticky--
"Next stop, Sycamore."
Chubby little boy can't keep his bug eyes off me.
The old industrial husk rattles and screams to a stop.
With the back of my swollen head pressed against the buses vent, I experience the heightened hum of mechanical respiration. Loose, hammered steel undulates against my fixed tectonic skull and synchronizes with the liquid in my ears which disconnects, joining the stratagem against my cranial architecture. My contaminated vial is shaken, in this portable lab, to separate the diseased compound and isolate the dirty foreigner. Where did it go--
"Central Avenue."
The metal beast pulls over to release pressure and change drivers. The exhausted Ssshhhhh of the hydraulics admits its age like an overdue surrendered sigh, and the entire platform, which seemed so steady, sinks two inches.
Tiny droplets of condensation begin to regroup on my brow. Now...
There is blood on my hands. And quite as literally as it possibly could be. Many of my fellow passengers have noticed and poorly acted casual, masking panic with translucent socially-constructed survival mechanisms.
Precipitation on my forehead gets heavy and intuition wants to join the collective cloud of fear if only I wasn't... bound to the threat.
"I'm one of you!" Desperate. They can't hear past the arterial red thunderhead. A swirling mental maelstrom gathers, trapped in this rectangular prism prison.
We aren't here to change drivers. A bloody blob shivers. A cop boards, unbuttoning his holster, and approaches the driver. Smartass kid raspberries me. A drop drips down into my tear duct and clears my bloodshot view. The driver points at me. I close my eyes and wish I was in bed.
In grade school, teachers always told me that I think too much. But I thought that was what you did in school. Weirdos. They thought that I should either be in special ed or gifted. The rationale of the system that shapes up is beyond me. Mud. All my thought trains end up in mud. I am martyred mortar for overachievers. I displace dead space in the swamps, mixing with the mulch to carve out tread for the ignorant striders. The hungry, productive professionals kill me time and time again, to further fashion escapism. The floor boards in this coffin creak under the eternal tapdance of death. Tapping deep and just out of rhythm. Tap. Harrowed by the harsh dissonance. Tap!
A nightstick jabs my ribs.
A large well-suited officers badge glints in my eye. Fear stirs and big brothers cradle rocks comfortably, sheltered from the cruel winds of heaven. Luckily, I'd managed to wipe the stickiness off my hands, so as not to sully the dark, oxygen-deficient blue pleated uniform. The sheepdog wears 35% wool, woven by thin slow hands behind a curtain of care. Unnoticed meticulousness carves out almost what the children wanted under the chemically-treated tree.
The A/C on these buses really isn't required of the city. It's actually a luxury. To get hard working citizens where... they need... to--
"Come with me sir," booms confidence backed by what we ironically have come so far only to best term "the law". In a la-la land full of hamster wheels and hot air. Spinning and blowing. Condensation collects, posing as progress, forgetting the window with fog until the faithful fearless anarchist runs his middle finger over the cold pane to forge a graph of the same old word from another new crypt.
He tightens the cuffs but cuts me some slack. It's just the rehearsed pantomime of justice. We sit on the split ends of the scale, balanced on an earth that is tilted. Cop and robber are closer than the taxpayer would like to know, imprisoning himself behind securities. Justice'd blindfold is expensive, so she turns the other cheek and it slips and she checks and balances her neighborhood watch that the supreme courted her with under the honey moon, but it's a sun dial nine to get "ouch!"
"Sorry about that," says the badge number. "City still hasn't gotten me new shocks. I'll try to be more careful," he grins, careening over a freshly paved residential speed bump. "If people would just slow down, we wouldn't have to waste money on those. Sure ain't like it used to be."
We pull into a parking lot of a familiar looking diner. It's a crime scene. Coroner is wheeling out a body bag like some trash collector for death. The black and blue gets out of the black and white and talks to one of his own. The conversation evesdrops into the colander of space, filtering every ninth word to me.
[to be continued]
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