Fear and Loathing in Mount Rose (title pending)

(this story really needs a better title. suggestions are appreciated)

Fear and Loathing in Mount Rose

By Jade Bové

“Fuck,” You think as you peek through the drapes of your cookie cutter house at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Phil just put up a pink flamingo in his yard.” You don’t know why this gets your blood boiling but it does. Why the fuck should he have a pink flamingo adoring his yard in such a way that suggests he is better than the rest of you. He’s not better than you. “Fuck that. I’m getting five of them.” You think silently to yourself, as if the very idea might betray itself orally without your permission.

At dinner you tell your averagely attractive wife, whom you met after college, in an Applebee’s, about Phil’s flamingo. She nods her head in a complacent fashion, because she either didn’t hear you or just doesn’t care. “Well fuck you too, then.” reverberates and echoes, like distant thunder, in your skull.

The next day you find yourself at Menards, but when you ask at the information desk, the crabby old lady with the bluish hair and swimming in her moo-moo, laughs at you and tells you that “We don’t sell that gaudy kind of lawn garbage here.” Still fueled by the need to continually one-up your neighbors, you head over to the Home Depot. It is less than a ten-minute drive from Menards to the Home Depot. You pass the same fast food joints that are lined up in the same order on the same side of the street in every other suburb, or interstate off ramp. Burger King, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut sit on the east side of the four lane county road like smug little fat kids who have just gotten their favorite snack via temper tantrum. Which reminds you that your daughter, Daisy, needs to sign up for those water aerobics classes at the Y. “God-damned suburbs.” You repeat this mantra again and again till you flick on your turn signal to enter into the massive parking lot that cradles the Home Depot, the Cub Foods, and the Barns & Noble. Who would have thought that these big-box stores would need to accommodate 5oo people at a time? You certainly didn’t when you decided to move out here.

You wander around the parking lot looking for the closest spot. “When did this become my point of pride, my biggest priority, being able to find the closest parking spot? I used to own a god-damned motor cycle for Christ’s sake.” For the millionth time you’ve questioned what the hell happened to you. You remember back to your high school and college days when you were careless and fancy-free. And skinny. God damn, how you used to be skinny. Remember that? Yeah, you do. The remembrance of being able to fit into that speedo and not look like a total schlub, sends you speeding to the nearest Subway exactly two store fronts down from Home Depot.

You order a foot long turkey bacon and ranch sub. Extra ranch, extra cheese, extra bacon. No lettuce because you heard on the news that it has a high potential to carry eboli or ecola or something like that. “Anything to drink with that?” asks the young woman at the register. She’s bored and really doesn’t care what you want. She’s attractive, really attractive, in that perpetual youth sort of way that young adults possess and covet, and she knows it. She wants you to stop looking at her like that. Close your mouth. “Uhh, yeah sorry, I’ll take a large Coke, but could you leave out the ice and fill it with half diet?”

“You fucking moron!” Her eyes scream at you as she plastically points at the self-serve fountain and hands you a cup.

You’re ashamed now and you should be, you don’t even know how old that girl is and you tried and failed to be a little healthy. You hurry out the door and waddle, that’s right you can actually feel yourself waddling now, over to Home Depot. Loosen your death grip on that sandwich dude, its not going anywhere. Look, you’re leaking creamy ranch all over. Greedily, like some starving inner city kid, you start stuffing your food hole with your sandwich while looking around for the lawn ornaments section.

The obnoxious hunter-orange hue of the store is confusing your visual cortex. You stop and admire a 450 drill-bit set conveniently marked down from two hundred dollars to $179.99 “Why the hell is it so hard to concentrate on so simple a fucking task as getting a stupid lawn ornament shaped like a bird?” That’s right. You remember again for the umpteenth time that you didn’t always have this short of an attention span. Remember that paper you wrote in college, the one where you argued Star Wars validity as tasteful literature and not pop-culture trash when examined using Pierre Macherey’s “Theory of Literary Production”? No, of course you don’t. You started watching too much TV, you spend all day in a cubicle staring at a computer screen crunching numbers that don’t mean anything to you any more.

Shaking your head, tying to focus, you find the lawn ornament section. “Ok what the hell all do we have here?” looking around you see lemon yellow plastic sunflowers, pin-wheels of various shapes and sizes in an array of horrible metallic tints, a small ceramic well with a “no fishing” sign fixed to one side. “What a bunch of crap.” You think.

Look, over there, a pear shaped employee, wearing the hideously orange smock that alerts you to their helpful disposition, is making her way over to you.

“Are you finding everything ok, sir?” she says to you while eyeing the ranch dribbles and breadcrumbs that adorn your teal stripped polo. “Uh, yeah, I guess…” you manage to stammer. “Do you have any pink flamingoes? You know, for lawn ornaments?” Jesus, you sound like a douche. You see her muffle a little smirk behind her chubby hand.

“Is it for you mother?”

“What the fuck? My mothe…” you think quickly. “Uh, n…no, its for a, uh, a prank. For one of my neighbors.” You mumble. Idiot.

“Well, we don’t really carry those any more. They are more of a specialty item these days. Have you tried the Wal-Mart?” That’s right, shake your head. Who buys pink flamingoes anyway? You can see her silently judging you and your tastes behind her rimless glasses.

“I guess I’ll try over there.” You manage to mummer meekly. You shuffle out the door to get in your car. The mid afternoon sun temporarily blinds you and you begin sweating immediately. “God-damned weather man was wrong again. A comfey 73 degrees my ass.” you lament as you look upon the TCF bank sign and see the thermometer has reached a scorching 92.

Go on, get in your mini-van. Yeah, that’s it, crank up that A.C. You guzzle down the last of your “healthy-ish” soda and immediately find you self in the midst of the early Saturday afternoon shopping rush hour. “God damnit! Don’t these people have anything better to do than go shopping all the God-damn time? Can’t they see that I have important shit to do? Get the fuck out of my way fuckers!” you scream and pummel the steering wheel with your doughy fists. But its ok, the windows are up and the A.C. is blasting at full bore. No one actually heard you. Wait, what was that? There, out of the corner of your eye. A car full of young people, girls and boys, they look to be… what? 18, 19, years old? They see the rage painted on your face and burst out into hysterical laughter. You have become the asshole. Someone caught you in the moment of a grown-up’s temper tantrum and recognized its absurdity. C’mon man, act you age. You watch them while waiting for the traffic to move on. Your death stare on full power, and you see them pass a joint from the front seat to the back. You get a sudden mirthful thought.

“Oh right, I’m the asshole, well I’ll show them just how much of an asshole I can really be.” Smirking to yourself, you make a great show of waving your arms to get their attention. You look behind you and see that the line of cars has doubled in the last few minutes. You wave at the kids, and hold up you Blackberry. You start giggling in your head but the absurdity and hypocrisy of what you are about to do is too much and you burst out cackling uncontrollably. The kids are watching you in stunned bemusement, laughing nervously, and giving you a thumbs-up, as they watch your finger slowly and purposefully dial a 9, then a 1 and then another 1. You show them that you are definitely punching the send button and watch the color drain from their faces. The driver panics like any inexperienced pot-head would and peels out of the line of cars, driving his nice new Mercedes SUV over the ornamental rock filled median and almost kills a tottering old lady who is trying to get into her dead husband’s ‘87 Cadillac. Never fully intending on pushing the send button you clear the number and put your phone back in your pocket. Smirking darkly, you feel better about yourself but you don’t know why, nor do you care.

“Awright, let’s get this fucking show on the road.” You mutter under your breath. The traffic has moved you up to the light and you know that you will get through on the next cycle. The years you spent as the pizza guy during college left a lasting mark. Watching the opposite light change from green to yellow, you rev your engine, and as soon as the light turns red, you gun it.

However, you temporarily forgot that all of these suburban stoplights all have left turn arrows. “Shit, shit, shit, that was stupid!” you hiss. Narrowly, you miss the on-coming car and cruise through the light amidst a cacophony of violent klaxonating. That thrill of a near miss head on collision seeps into your bones and you hands get all tingly. For the first time in days, you are smiling. There, on the left, you see a Lowes. “Fuck it,” you think. “I don’t care anymore. I’ll go to Wal-Mart and if they don’t have any, I’ll just put a flaming bag of dog shit on Phil’s front door step.”

Wal-Mart. That last bastion of hope where you can buy everything from underwear to guns 24-7. The one place in the burbs where white trash and blue bloods can co-mingle and no one says anything to each other because they are all too embarrassed to be seen there. They’ve seen the news reports, they know and you know Wal-Mart’s track record. Having had your fill of embarrassment for the day you shrug off all modesty and drive into the lot as if you owned the place. And to be honest, you do. You helped approve the zoning for it and were one of 100 people who pitched in an equal share to franchise it. God, what happened to you man? Remember that leather jacket and all the punk rock shows you went to? Now you own a fucking Wal-Mart franchise? You used to be cool man.

Looking around the lot, you decide that everybody and their brother is at Wal-Mart today. You should probably just quit now and accept defeat. Go home to your reasonably attractive wife, cute but annoying kid, and your golden retriever with the lazy eye. Just let Phil win this one. No? You won’t accept this defeat? You mean you’ve grown a pair and you are going to stick it to him this time? You’re going to show him that anything he does you can do bigger and better? Awesome! About frickin time! Oop, there’s your spot all the way at the very farthest away corner from the door. You park and get out. You’ve already forgotten about the obnoxious heat wave. By the time you get inside the sliding glass doors your polo is mostly soaked through, and you are slightly out of breath. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a mother herd her small children away from you while keeping an accusatory eye on you. “The fuck ‘er you lookin at lady?” the thought spreads like mercury till it’s the only thing you can hear in your head. She probably thinks you’re some kind of pederast because you’re sweaty, wheezing and have white stains on your shirt. Go grab a cart.

Inside, while strolling down the lawn care aisle, you see a woman trying in vain to discipline her three-year-old son. You notice her ass and compare it to your wife’s. Her’s is better. “I god-damned told you no touching!” The face slap reverberated off the rubber lawn hoses, dull and hateful. You shake your head as you decide that it’s none of your business how the woman disciplines her kid. Hell, if it was you, you might have just belted the kid for real, instead of that wussie limp wristed action, and taken him home. These kids today are way too spoiled but you know that if you ever raised a hand to Daisy, your wife would dump your ass faster than Obama can say economic reform.

Not caring what kind of response you get this time, you go up to one of the shelvers, and ask where you can find pink flamingoes. The young man stands up and turns around. You see his pierced nose and wonder what your wife would say if you came home with one of those. Then you notice his blue smock. “Why the hell do all of these big-box employees wear smocks?” you wonder idly.

Shhh, he’s speaking. “Pink flamingoes? Geese, uhh, I dunno. Are you talking about the movie? Have you tried the indie film section? But we might not carry it, John Waters might be a little too liberal and controversial for this place…” you walk off in disgust. “Fucking emo-hipsters, and their cool hair and ironically colored shoes and their tight girl pants.” You mutter under your breath as you continue on down the aisle.

Finally, after what seems like hours you find the damned pink flamingos. Look at ‘em. There must be close to a hundred of them here. You dig through them, wondering why you didn’t think to come here first. “Of course Wal-Mart has fucking pink flamingoes. You dig for the ones that have the brightest color, the straightest legs, and the curviest necks. There, you have found ten perfect pink flamingoes to put in your yard. Good for you. That Phil is really going to look like some kind of asshole now. You feel your chest swelling with pride. You did it. You are going to one-up him so bad now. Go to the cashier. You deserve a Hershey bar on the way out too.

You smile nonchalantly at the cashier, a pretty, young blond who may or may not be in high school. “It’s hard to tell these days, especially out here in the suburbs where pop culture rules more than it should, with fifteen year old girls trying to look like they are twenty and eighteen year old boys trying to look like they are sixteen year old girls.” you think to yourself as she bends over to scan the plastic aviary. Good for you, you just had your first original thought in over three months. Keep it up. Just don’t look down her shirt.

“Didjya find everything ok?” she asks in that practiced and obviously fake friendliness.

“Oh yeah, no problem, I knew just what I was going for.” You wink at her before you can stop yourself. Your overly inflated pride has given you an overly false sense of security and self-confidence. Seriously? You’re hitting on this girl? At you age? Your friends have daughters about her age. Pay and get out.

You spend your drive home flipping between NPR and the oldies station, which, sadly, has started playing music that you first listened to in high school. “Has it really been that long? Am I old? High school was only…” you count on your fingers, “…17 years ago.” Loser. Just like the song that’s on the radio now. Soy un pertador baby. It sounds so lame now. You try to remember what the music said to you back then. You recognize vague references to what you believed to be love and rebellion at the time. A twinge of that teenage rebellion ekes its way to the surface of your skin, it tingles for a moment, but somehow it doesn’t seem as important now. It’s not as exciting as it used to be. You have a mortgage to think about and a wife to keep happy. Oh, and don’t forget that you have neighbors to compete with. And that damned dog with the lazy eye.

You turn on Galaxy Drive, the main thorough fair that leads to the street that leads to the turn off to your cul-de-sac, Star Gazer Circle. For the millionth time you wonder aloud, “Who the fuck names these streets?” You check the clock on the stereo that is screaming that song about walking 500 miles. It’s nearly five o’clock. Just about dinnertime. You turn the corner that will put you in your little nook of a neighborhood in less than five minutes and hear the clatter of the plastic birds in the back. “Oh man this is going to so sweet, after dinner I’m gonna invite Phil over for some beers. Then after the wives go to bed I’ll break out the whiskey and get him real drunk, but I’ll cut mine with water and pour him doubles. Then when he’s wasted and goes home, I’ll put these fucking birds up and then we’ll see who has the last laugh!” what a great plan you schemer you. Moron.

You round the corner and head on in. Much to your dismay your field of vision is flooded with a sea of pink. “OH FUCK YOU PHIL! YOU GODAMN ASS HOLE!” you scream at the top of your lungs. Wait. Wait just one damn minute. Why? Why are there about a hundred pink flamingoes in your fucking yard? That son of a bitch! He was fucking with you the whole time. He knew that you would spend the whole day racing around looking for the damned pink aviary. He was playing you from the start. They all were. They were all in on it. Pull into your driveway, right now. Everyone is laughing at you. Phil, Don, Hugh, you wife, your daughter, that weird lady who lives at the end and never talks to any one until she needs someone to shovel for her. Even the dog looks like he’s laughing at you.

“That’s it; they are ALL getting flaming bags of dog shit in front of their doors tonight” is the last thing you mutter to yourself as you duck your head and walk inside to a mediocre lasagna and limp salad with too much ranch dressing followed by a night of bad cable television.

Love Letter

Love Letter­­­­­

by Jade Bové

You were perfect. Almost too perfect. Like a porcelain angel with black wings. You were one of those girls who seemed like she was one of the guys but still retained your femininity and sexuality. You would cuss and drink whiskey, fart and smoke cigarettes, and laugh at the kind of jokes I would only tell around my work buddies at the hog plant. I used to watch you from the sidelines, till I decided that I had had enough of all the other drunk asshole-douche bags hitting on you, taking advantage of you and your generosity. I was tired of you getting eyeballed and groped by these fat hairy truckers who stopped at this lonesome tittie bar out on the inter-state. Sure you had your faults just as the rest of us do, like your meth habit and the baby at home, (thanks for letting me take care of him by the way. It was a real treat) but you were something else. Long raven hair, full, pouty, strawberry red lips, and skin the color of bleached bone. I loved tracing patterns, with my eyes, in the small scars that criss-crossed your calves and forearms, the older ones more haphazard and rugged than the fresher pink ones. The craterous cigarette burns that dotted your torso were so artfully placed that they served only to enhance your beauty. There was an elegance and a precision about their placement that told me you knew how to handle pain and maybe even liked it.

I remember the first Halloween show that you did that Snow White routine. That really drove all the guys wild. Like a bunch of hogs during feeding time, or just before they went to slaughter. I remember you had a thing for the Disney princesses. For each month’s holiday you’d dress up like one of the little strumpets and do a routine for the beer guzzling truckers, and give a few free dances to some of your regular customers. I was always too shy to go up to you when you put on these shows. I liked to watch from the bar. I was never one to bring much attention to myself, unlike the swine that drifted in here night to night or week-to-week depending on where their freight was going.

I loved to watch you. I could see in your face that you didn’t like your job. But it was a living and we all have to work. Never smiling until the last minute when some fat fuck caught your eye. You were always looking away from the guys on sniffers row. I knew that you were looking for me. Whenever you looked at me I’d give a wink and a nod, like my granddad taught me, and raise my glass to you. You’d flash a toothy grin at me, one that would touch your eyes, and then let your face droop back to that look of dull boredom. When you weren’t looking at them you were looking at the floor or at me. I got the real smiles, they got disdain stretched across your face. That’s how I knew that we were destined to be together. I could see it in your face that you didn’t care for the kind of swine that came in here and paid for your attention.

I remember a couple of times you were not in a good mood. One time stands out in particular. A bachelor party had come in, remember? The groom was wearing a pink wedding dress as part of a prank or some weird city boy hazing ritual. I could see Jezebel’s fire behind your eyes that night. I never asked why you were so angry that night but you sure let that city boy have it. When his friend put him up on the stage tied to the chair in front of the pole, I had no idea what was in store. That poor boy didn’t either. I remember that you were on an Iron Maiden kick. You started dancing for this city boy. And were getting caught up in the music and the tempo. This is what I will never forget, the way you did that poor dog. You got up on the chair, grasping the pole above his head and began smashing your crotch in his face and his head snapped back slamming into the pole. At first it was kind of funny, even a little erotic, but then when the song was over and you didn’t stop and started screaming at him. The bouncers rushed in to drag you off. You clawed one of them in the face pretty bad. The city boy’s friends were terrified. They grabbed him down from the stage. The back of his head was busted up pretty bad. Looked like when Big Roy takes the bolt gun to a pig at the plant. You fucked that boy up good. I slunk out side to help those boys get their friend to the hospital. I put their friend in my van and took care of him while they went back to the city with the party bus. I remember thinking that night that you were going to be perfect. There was no doubt in my mind that you would love me for who I was and that wee were going to be very, very happy together forever.

Another night, I remember, a couple of the truckers got a little too grabby. You didn’t like the rough hands touching your smooth as butter skin. I didn’t appreciate it either. They didn’t know it yet, but you were mine, and mine alone. You started shrieking like a harpy at them and calling them all sorts of colorful names that should never have to pass over such gorgeous lips. You even tried to toss a bar stool at them. Your throw was limp at best and the stool landed on a table sending a cascade of broken glass twinkling and tinkling to the floor. When the bouncers got the two animals out into the parking lot, I went out to watch and wait. The bouncers gave the two a good roughing up, but I didn’t think it was enough. They had touched my porcelain angle, they had scuffed the lacquer smooth finish with their oafish paws. I couldn’t let that stand. I was going to show them that there were consequences that were much worse than a light thrashing for guys who get too grabby with the girls. Later, when I was washing the blood and hair from my hands and forearms, I found one of the guy’s teeth in the rolled up sleeve of my button-up denim shirt. I was proud of what I did, I felt chivalrous. I got a nice big rig and rusted out Ford pick-up that I could sell for about ten grand. That’s how I paid for your ring. Remember when I told you that story? We were driving away from Reno just after our wedding night. You had asked where I got my money from. I told you not to worry about it, but you were persistent. Kept bugging me the whole drive south to Death Valley National Park. I didn’t want you to be worrying about money because it’s not the wife’s responsibility, it’s the husband’s. Then you gave me those puppy dog eyes and I new I couldn’t keep the truth from you. When I told, you said that it was very romantic and that I was a regular Bossa Nova. Sometimes you could be so stupid it was cute, but I knew what you meant. I always kinda saw myself as more of a Don Juan though.

The night I introduced myself to you was a magical night. Do you remember? It was a few weeks after I sold the pick-up and big rig. The moon was full, the size and color of a sow’s ass. I could smell the electricity in the air over the tire fire that was raging over on the other side of the inter-state. When I walked through the parking lot that night, with the tire fire raging, the noxious smoke roiling into my breathing space and the neon lights of Clovis’s Truck Stop and Family Eatery spilling eerie half light onto the asphalt, I thought briefly that this is what hell must be like; stinky and oddly lit with a tittie bar full of fat hairy swine. I let the thought slip away because I had other, more important things to think about and do that would take all of my concentration and bravery. There was no need to dwell on it further, I knew that I would be seeing it again soon enough. You can’t live forever.

I lit up a cigarette to calm my shaking hands. I always get anxious before it starts. You know that. I pushed open the plastic padded double doors to the strip joint and made a beeline for the bar. The cigarette wasn’t doing the job. This was going to require some Canadian Club. I felt the comforting warm and fuzzy feeling wrap its arms around my brain numbing some of the more fantastical and deranged thoughts, as I placed the empty shot glass on the bar. The butterflies in my stomach were letting out their death rattles as they drowned in the sickly sweet Canadian brown water. Taking long and confident strides towards sniffer’s row I noticed that you were entertaining an older gentleman. He was pudgy and pink and balding. He was soft. I could tell that he never had to work hard for his money. His type was one of three on the top of my list. Fat rich guys who haven’t done an honest day’s hard labor, getting rich off the sweat of someone else’s back. Then there are the arrogant college boys with white baseball hats, collared tee-shirts, and those flippy-floppy sandals who think they’re better than me ‘cause they use fancy ten-dollar words and drink imported beer from green bottles. And then there are hitchhikers. Bunch of goddamned hippies who need to get jobs, buy cars, eat meat and be real Americans and drive every damn where. Besides, nobody cares who they are or where they’re going.

But this is about you and us and I have gotten away from the point, I told you all of this before, when we were headed out of Utah and towards Roswell. (I never did quite get your obsession with the aliens. I always figured if they could get past the fence and The Minute Men, good for them)

The fat, pink man dressed well, dark blue sports jacket, gold watch, gold cuff links, gold tie clip, a rich C.E.O type with a white collar on a cornflower blue shirt. Why the hell was he in this sty? I remember thinking. It didn’t really matter though. I left you alone so you could make your money, but I took note of this man. I had plans for him.

I lingered around some of the other dancers; all the while I never let my gaze drift from you for too long. I kept a mental list of all five of the boorish prigs that paid for your company that night. Enjoy it pigs. Enjoy it, you slop wallowing, bottom feeding swine. I remember thinking, getting angrier and angrier. This is the last time you’ll ever get this kind of attention from her again. The last time you can pay for her kindness. After tonight, you’ll just be a memory and she’ll be all mine. I had worked myself into a curious fever, my brain felt like the smoke choked parking lot outside and I realized that it was going to be a very busy night. I needed to relax so I let myself drift through thoughts of us living a happily married life and lost track of time. You had moved over to talk to one of the other dancers. I signaled for another whiskey, downed it and got up to make my move. I had taken two steps when I noticed the CEO walking out the door. His face was shiny and he had sweat circles under his arms. I could smell his fear, Old Spice and cheap scotch. I knew that he knew that he wasn’t supposed to be here. I followed him out to his car.

Twenty minutes later I was in the bathroom dabbing the sweat from my brow, trying to pretty up for you. That one hadn’t exerted me as much as the last few had. I was still in great shape for a 38 year-old. It’s comforting to know that my high school wrestling had stuck. I was feeling pretty good. I even had a little chubby growing. I went back out to the lounge and saw you standing alone by the bar. Perfect. You were perfect. The night was perfect. Nothing could possibly spoil it. I signaled for two drinks and slid up next to you and introduced myself. Your eyes sparkled like green pond water on a sunny day. I remember you asked me to buy you a drink. I remember the coy smile you gave me when you turned around and saw your Jack and Coke already sitting there. I was clearly more than you had expected. You knew that I was a catch and that you would be a fool to ignore me. I was and still am a gentleman after all.

The old man who sold roses out of a five-gallon plastic bucket came in. When you had turned away to talk to one of your friends I bought one of the roses and stuck it in your empty glass of ice. Then I ordered another round. When you turned back around and saw the rose your smile could have killed me dead and I’d have died happy. You were radiant, especially when the spotlight bounced off the baby-oil slick that covered your body. Your perfect toothpaste-commercial smile could have lit up the whole dank and dark bar. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were dentures. You were always good at making me laugh with your jokes and little pranks. Like when you left your dentures in my water glass that one night on our honeymoon. Sorry you had to wear sunglasses after that for so long by the way. You were falling in love with me, I could tell. I knew that it was going to be a wonderful honeymoon. Absolutely nothing was going to ruin this for us now. It was destiny, it was fate, we were meant to be together. You asked me if I wanted a dance. I declined. I told you that there would be plenty of dancing later, then I asked you when you’d get done working. You winked at me and said that you aren’t supposed to tell. But we both knew that I knew that you knew that I knew you’d be done at three. I knew that you wanted me to come back, your winks and light touches on my legs had told me so. Each time you brushed your tits against my arm betrayed your feelings for me. I told you I had to run some errands but that I’d be back and we’d party some more later and make some sweet sweet love. You laughed and said “I don’t think so” a little sarcastically and went into the back dressing room, shaking that sweet fanny from side to side for me. You had a light sarcastic streak, which was part of your charm. God I loved you. I still love you, which is why writing this hurts so much.

As you walked away, I saw two of your other customers headed towards the door. They had white hats and flippy-floppy sandals. Round two was upon me. I needed to get up and move around a bit anyway. I had a few too many Canadian Clubs and my head was feeling a little cloudy. Some fresh air was all I needed. Besides, I needed to get my wedding gift and the van ready for you. I walked out the door about a minute after the two jackals who were howling with laughter. One of them was talking about how badly you had wanted him. The other one was a slobbering mess, his sentences punctuated with gibbery laughter. I knew they weren’t your type and that you were just being polite. They were easy to find through the oily smoke and strange half lighting of the parking lot. Drunks are suckers for helping out with changing a spare tire. Two at a time was little difficult but my love for you was my strength and let me handle the two of them. Three down, just two more and then your wedding present would be ready.

I went back inside and freshened up in the men’s room. The cologne dispenser was empty so I used the air freshener cake hanging on the wall. It wouldn’t do to greet my future wife smelling of sweat, booze and someone else’s cologne. Lighting a cigarette as I walked back out to the lounge I took a survey of who was still there. It was getting near 2:30 in the morning and it was a Tuesday so the herd had thinned itself out a bit. That was fine by me, the fewer swine in here hogging your attention the better. There were just the three closing dancers and you, the two bouncers, the bartender, the D.J and seven or eight fat truckers. I couldn’t see the other two vermin on my mental list and the truckers were looking at the other girls.

I got another drink to take the edge off. I was still feeling the rush of anticipation. I couldn’t wait to show you your gift. I waited at the bar for you to come to me or for the two vultures to show their scaly faces. When you showed up first. I decided that three would be good. It’s a magical number. In all the old fairytales everything happens in threes. And I wanted us to have a fairytale life together. When you saw me you sidled up just like a dog who knows that it is doing something that it isn’t supposed to, but acts like it isn’t doing anything wrong, while keeping one eye half on its owner. That was good. You knew how I liked my women already. Coy and aware of who was in charge. That would save a lot of time I would have had to spend on training you. What a wonderful woman you were already. We were going to be so happy. I couldn’t wait for three o’clock to roll around. You asked if I wanted to buy you a drink and asked me my name again. As if you didn’t know. What a cutie pie you were, trying to play hard to get and pretending that you didn’t know me.

We chatted for a while longer. You kept “accidentally” rubbing your boobs against my arm and touching my inner thigh. “Oops…” you’d say, and flash a grin when your hand got too close to my junk. So god damned adorable the way you played the innocent. You were really good at flirting with me, you knew just how to get my engine roaring. Then the D.J. called you up to the booth. You requested some bands I hadn’t heard of. I remember how perfect the songs had been though. One was about a perfect day and the other had a haunting chorus that just chanted the word voodoo over and over. I will remember and cherish the sounds of those two songs forever. They will always remind me of our first night together. This night was getting more perfect by the minute. I couldn’t wait to show you your wedding present.

When you came back over to me I looked at you sheepishly and told you I had a present for you in my van. I asked you if you wanted to come back to my place for some drinks and some fun. I felt like the devil was in me. It felt good. It’s the hot part I like best. The hot waves that beat with my pulse. You hesitated, but I flashed you my award winning smile and I assured you that it was going to be magical, that you would love it as much as me. You glanced at the bartender. He said something like he’d walk you to your car if you wanted, but I think he was just jealous that you were obviously in love with me and not him. It only took one more please to seal the deal. I always told you that it was fate. You gathered your things from the back and we walked out into the hellish night. It was really hot. I remember you saying so and that the summer heat made you hot. I read between the lines and got your meaning. I’m no dummy. I hope you remember how fantastic a time we had that night.

There was a storm brewing off in the distance. The sticky southern air made your hair frizz and curl. Adorable. I pointed out the lightning flickers to you off to the west. You said it was pretty and asked if I had some coke. I did but it was in the back of my van along with your wedding present. You gave me a funny look when I said wedding present. It was a long walk to the van and I told you that I had been watching you for a long time. I told you that I was falling in love with you and that soon enough you would love me too. I started walking faster pulling you along. Sometimes I wish my hobbies didn’t require me to park at the very ass end of the parking lot in the shadows behind the idling big rigs. Your stripper heels didn’t help get us there any faster. I remember you whispering under your breath that I had better have some damn good drugs and a wad of cash ready. Ever the optimist you were. I said I did and that I also had something better.

You were shivering, despite the heat, when we walked up to the van. You asked why I parked so far away and I told you it was so I could have a nice walk to clear my head after too many drinks. I asked if you were ready for your present. “There better be some fantastic drugs in there, and big wad of cash” you said again. I told you to relax.

I pulled open the sliding door to reveal three of your customers hogtied and gagged. Their eyes were rolling wildly in their skulls with fear. The CEO was squirming to get loose and failing. I never forgot the knot tying lessons from boy-scouts. One of the college boys was passed out in a puddle of his own vomit. The other one was staring straight at me, frozen like a deer in headlights. I giggled, excited for you to open your presents. I looked over at you and you were trembling. I asked you if you were okay. Then I realized that you probably wanted the drugs I promised. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my special cocktail, part Meth, part L.S.D. and a touch of testosterone. I gave you the pill and then handed you the hunting knife. I told you that these swine were for you to butcher. I told you I had seen the glares that you wore and how you only smiled at me. I reminded you of your past assaults on the swine and that now was your chance to get even. I told you that this is who you were and that you could do this, you had been preparing for this moment for your whole life with the little cuts and burns, and the assaults on customers. You could take control and take it all out on them instead of your self. The look of bewilderment on your face eased into acceptance and then something I had never seen before, something I still cant put my finger on.

I’m not sure what I expected. I knew that you would be delighted with your present, but I hadn’t anticipated your reaction. I thought you would have been timid about it even shy and ask for help. I thought that we would maybe share a tender moment before things became considerably less tender. What I did not expect was for you to lunge at them in a rage unrivaled by any of hell’s furies. The knife was a silver blur in your hand as you stabbed and slashed and sprayed arterial fluid all over the interior of my van. I was so happy. We could finally be together. This was perfect. This was true love. You had exceeded any and all of my expectations. We were able to share everything together. You were so beautiful that night. I will never forget how the blood collected in the faint, fine lines of your face, turning it into some visage of demonic beauty.

You stopped after awhile, after your fury had subsided. There was not much left that resembled the animals. You had chopped the hell out of them and even jointed one of them. You told me, then, that your daddy took you out hunting when you were young and had to learn how to dress the animals. I was in awe. You wiped the blood from your face. I lead you towards the front seat and buckled you in. You were exhausted and now it was time for me to take care of you. I went to the driver’s side and hopped in. We went home and made love on the floor of, what was then, our home. After that I bathed you and gave you a baptism for the damned. Then we made beautiful love again.

We disposed of the bodies later that morning and left town after that. Remember what you said when I asked where we should go first? It was the perfect choice. Reno. We had to get married. It was our destiny. We had to go there and have a proper shotgun wedding. Just before we got to the chapel I told you I had another surprise for you. I could see the devilish glint in your eye when I said surprise. I pulled over on the side of the street and popped the trunk and followed you around to show you what I had. You looked confused when all you saw was the beginning of our collection, our shared trophies. “Look under the mason jars”, I told you. I saw your big doe eyes go all weepy when you saw the strip of pink cloth. You crushed the wedding dress to your chest and started crying. It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given you you told me. We sauntered into the chapel as if we owned the world. You asked the dolly pardon look-a-like for the dressing room to change while I set up our Elvis Presley wedding. We celebrated by collecting a runt from a heard of Elvi that night. We had to keep a low profile after all.

The following two and half years were amazing. Going wherever the wind and a full tank of gas took us. I will never forget the bond that grew between us while roaming the county’s various truck stops and tittie bars. Our collection grew and grew.

I guess I let it get a little out of hand. We started getting sloppy. It was when you started going out on your own collecting runs that I knew the honeymoon was over. It was my fault really. I failed you in our relationship and I am so incredibly sorry. I have always had trouble with communication. Communication with women in particular. I never fully explained the rules to you. There are a set of rules that govern the chaos that we succumb to when we go collecting. The first rule is don’t shit where you eat. No collecting where you or your family lives. The second is never make the next collection within 150-miles of the last one. The third, and probably the most important, the one that you broke, the one that broke my heart. Two as one was acceptable, but two separate collectors in the same state was against the rules. You got the bloodlust in you and started going out without me. We were a team. You called me your partner in crime and that felt so good. It felt natural and true. When I discovered that you had started your own collection I knew that the honeymoon was over. A two-year honeymoon is a long time by anyone’s standards, but you fucked up. I fucked up. But my survival instinct kicked in. I’m only human after all.

That’s why I surprised you in the shower yesterday. I wanted to see you as you are, natural, not all dolled up in your princess costumes. The piano wire cut my hands pretty badly but I wanted to see your face one last time. The hunting knife would have been the wrong tool for you. You deserved better. Something cleaner. Something poetic and musical.

Now before I start filling in your grave Denice, I want you to know that I love you and that I will never ever love another as much as I love you. Nobody will be able to share with me what we shared. I know that you are a little scared and that you are probably in a dark place now, and that is a frightening place to be. I’ve watched many others go there. If you are still near, if your soul is still near by, don’t watch. Just head into the tunnel, after the darkness you will see the ruddy glow of the fires of passion that my love has created for you, on the other side, to keep you company till I can be with you again. I’m burying this letter to you with you so that you will always remember the day we met and how much I love you.

damn. i need to either stop posting things when i'm drunk or get a copy editor. sorry for all the typos folks. i'll fix them soon.

untitled

EDITORS NOTE: this is a second draft. i think it still needs work but i thought you all might to have a look anyway. hope you like it. oh, one other thing. i cant think of a good title. help a brotha out if you feel so inclined.

****

Sometimes walking, often times stumbling down the wind swept streets of old Chicago he pulls his coat tight around him. Ancient memories of Minneapolis flood his mind and he thinks quietly and aloud “this ain’t so bad, I’ve lived through worse.” The wind has a bitter sting to it as it slices through his threadbare over coat.

Recalling the last four or five hours is a bit of a struggle for him. All he can remember is a few shots of Jameson, blocking some one’s head with his fist, and blood that wasn’t his pooling on the concrete. He shakes his head to regain his composure, not sure if he even had any in the first place. All that does is make the spinning and nausea worse. He tries to keep it in but it’s too late. Through clenched teeth and fingers across his mouth, he ads his own graffiti to the wall tinted with hues of amber, red and brown.

He still had the knife clutched in his hand. “Where did this come from?” he wonders silently. The handle was slippery but he couldn’t remember why. Memories kept flashing by his eyes like headlights on a freeway. Faces and yelling, booze and a girl, nothing would solidify in his minds eye long enough for him to completely recall what had transpired. He kept walking positive that the exercise would help sober him up and he could remember every thing in the morning when he wakes up safe snug in his bed. His right arm was warm despite the cold, and his jacket clung to him, damp, in places. It felt heavy and tired. When he tried to lift it, it hurt just enough to remind him not to try and lift it again.

Where were his friends? He had asked them to keep an eye on him. They had a train to catch. They were all supposed to meet at the LaSalle stop and take the blue line to…somewhere; or, was it the green line. It doesn’t matter now, he’s lost and confused with a knife in his hand and blood soaked coat sleeve. He stops and wonders if they’ll let him in at Cal’s bar any more. He liked that bar. He doesn’t even notice the sudden clarity of where he had been. No time to ponder that now, he continues walking.

Stumbling down the sidewalk, he narrowly misses overturning some old bag ladies cart full of cans and garbage bags holding her various treasures found in the alleyways and gutters. “Watch where yer goin’ assh hole!” she croaks and tries to navigate her cumbersome cart around him.

“This isn’t my knife.” He tries to tell her. He feels the intense urge to be given absolution for having this large and apparently deadly knife. He flashes it at her and the streetlight reflects off of the now dull brown sap that has clung and crusted onto the blade. She knows then that it is time to leave and soaks back into the shadows of the alley.

A flash of memory zips across his whiskey fogged brain like a lightning bolt shattering the darkness of a storm: There was a man in a leather motorcycle jacket and his biker bitch humping in an alley they both saw him, the man grinned while the lady looked disgusted. Weather the disgust was directed at him for accidentally observing the coitus or at her self for letting this guy put his dick in her so she could score some H he could not say. He was distracted from the scene by a bum asking for change. His breath reeked of vodka and his cloths contained that special uric sting that the homeless seem to wear like cheap cologne. Further down the alley he could see some under age kids passing a brown paper bag around their huddled circle. His eyes glanced up at the street sign but it was obscured by a halo of light and leaves. Then the memory is gone.

But who did I stab? He asks him self. Did he stab any of the people from the memory? Or had his depression progressed so far that he had started cutting himself during his increasingly frequent black outs? Could it be that he tried severing his own arm at the shoulder? And for that matter where did he get this knife? Too many questions were prancing around his head as if there were a group of whirling dervishes doing their sword dance in the middle of a sand storm. His head was starting to ache and the pain and heaviness in his arm was getting worse.

Wandering through the twisted alleyways he finds an antique lamppost that had probably been around since Capone ran the city of Chicago. Leaning on the building just on the dark side of the halo of margarine colored light he examines the knife for any clues. Its about six inches long and of a military style, like a miniature Rambo knife. There is a spike on the hilt for cracking skulls, a skull cracker.

He suddenly felt eyes on him. The fight or flight panic was starting to kick in now and the intense urge to hide was flooding through him. Panicked eyes rolled around his eye sockets looking for a place to escape the ever-watchful eye of “them”. There was no telling who could see what he was doing and where those watchers might be watching from.

As panicked induced adrenaline began coursing through his muscles, he sprints blindly in the direction his whiskey-addled brain thinks of as home; north.

His mom will save him he thought. She’ll make every thing okay again. His mom lived In Minneapolis, and he was in Chicago blacked-out drunk. This was one of those classic moments that you stumble across in life; where the only thing that could possibly make it any better was for your mom to shush you and tell you everything was going to be alright while rubbing your back.

With out looking where he was going and knowing only the direction he wanted to go, he dashed into the street confident that he was going home to mother and everything would be fine in the morning.

He never felt the semi smash into him and pulverize his chest and spine. He didn’t feel the eight or nine bounces followed by a long skid that tore off his face and shredded his already tattered clothing to little more that rags. He was already unconscious and dreaming when the brick wall of a building brought him to a knee popping halt which ironically sent his knee caps flying off into the night to be dinner for a family of stray kittens.

The knife had flown from his hand and made its home, buried to the hilt, in the head of the bag lady who had called him an ass hole only minutes before. She died instantly. Such is karma.

And the man dreamed. In those last few moments of life when the human mind is at its most creative and functioning at he highest levels to keep the body alive, he dreams, unaware that his body lies crumpled, in a heap at the foot of the mercantile exchange in Chicago.

He was lost in a fantastic world of his own design and had no idea what the rules were, for he had yet to decree them. Flying through the misty white void he zooms past trees of titanic height, half created angels, various bits of flotsam and jetsam of galaxies waiting to be born, a model t ford, and a three year old wearing a cute little sailors outfit clutching and oversized loli-pop and riding a faded and rusted tricycle. He thinks he has been falling for hours possibly even days, if falling is what he is actually doing. For all he knew he was standing still and this myriad of seemingly random objects is just hurtling past him. The epiphany of relative time and space and motion reveals its self to him in that moment. Watching an antique cash register glide past a pink elephant that was surrounded by bubbles, he wonders if this parade of random nouns will ever stop.

Eventually he mist becomes thinner and field full of flowers materializes around him stretching off towards the horizon and beyond. It’s a veritable sea of shifting colors that answers only to the whims of the wind. Perhaps he had been standing still.

This Elysian field was filled with a multitude of colors. All shades and varieties of reds, blues, oranges, and violets and pinks went on as far as the eye could see. All of them dancing in the wind under the watchful gaze of the random sunflower.

With nothing else to do he starts walking across the field, stepping through patches of petunias the color of seawater on a clam day, feeling the sunshine warmly on his face. Warm, he discards his threadbare trench coat and walks on under the towering sunflowers that create pools of shadow in this sea of sunlight. He crests the small rise in the field that was obstructing his view and sees the tree line. Mighty oaks, and elms, and other hardwoods, keep the flowers corralled in the field. He notices clarity to his vision that he had never had before. From this distance, which he guessed was at lest three hundred yards or more, he could see each and every individual leaf on any tree that he was looking at as if the branch were right in front of his face. The leaves flickered and danced in the wind and sunshine like a school of fish darting through a wave trying to escape a predator. The image is so powerful that he thinks for a moment that he really is seeing fish.

He started walking towards the tree line, noticing that there were a lot more sunflowers on this side of the ridge. There was an animal path for him to walk on. The further down the path he got, the taller and larger the sunflowers got. Where once the heads made only pools of shadow, these were creating entire ponds. He stopped to look at these massive stalks and found more than a few that were thicker than his wrist, and one that was as wide as his hand. Looking up, the sunflowers themselves were the size of umbrellas. Enjoying the shade he continued on his way toward the tree line.

After what felt like fifteen minutes that could have just as easily been fifteen hours, he came out of the sunflowers he was still several hundred yards away from the tree line. The deer path he was on led him from the edge of the sunflowers straight into a very large rose patch. Roses the color of fresh blood bloomed as far as the eye could see. Here the deer path stopped abruptly. He looked around for any sign of a path going around or through the roses but alas there were none.

‘This can’t be any worse than Chicago’ he thinks to himself. Then he tries to remember what was so important about Chicago. He wades carefully into the sea of blood red roses in front of him, not wanting to scratch his legs too badly. After fifty yard or so his legs feel warm and damp. Stooping over and parting the bushes, he finds that his trousers have been completely shredded and snagged on a hundred thousand thorny stems, and that his legs are cris-crossed with hundreds of tiny scratches, each letting out a few drops of crimson. With no other choice he continues on through the field of spiny beauty while the phrase ‘death from a thousand paper cuts’ alternates with a visual image of him walking out of the rose patch with no flesh on his legs between ankle and knee. As he walks through the roses, his blood spills on several flowers each step. The blood dripping from the flowers looks as if all color were draining their own color to quench the thirst of the cracked and dry soil that their roots were sleeping under.

Finally after what seemed like hours but could have been days he emerged from this bloody field and much to his surprise, there was no meat left on his shins, Just the pearly white gleam of the tibia and the fibula. His knees were there and his feet and ankles were there but not anything in between. Finding this odd but still able to walk, he figured that he would just keep going for lack of any thing better to do. Looking ahead at the trees he realized that he was hungry. He sets off into the woods in hopes of finding a scrumptious meal. As soon as he stepped into the woods it was apparent that he was no longer in Kansas any more, or Chicago as this case may be. Looking at the trees he discovers that they are completely two-dimensional, flat as a piece of paper. Shaking his head to clear his vision in an attempt to restore his surroundings to their normal three dimensions, he discovers that it is to no avail. The trees are still flat. Hoping that there might be an apple or some other fruit-bearing tree in this weird forest he sets off again.

“I’ve been walking for hours…” he says out loud to himself half hoping some one else would answer. He looked at his watch. The face had been cracked and the hands had stopped at 11:23. “Well is it morning or night?” he remembers leaving somewhere and it was nighttime, but that seemed so long ago, and besides it was daylight here. Wasn’t it? Come to think of it the light just seemed to be everywhere, he looked up to see if he could peer through the leaves. For the most part the branches blocked his view, but when the wind moved them just right he could see the sky, which from this limited viewpoint yielded glimpses of a whitish overcast tone to the sky. But despite the overcast sky and the fact that he was under a lush canopy of branches that have both length and width but no depth and should be enclosing him in near total blackness, the light just seemed to be there. It was if everything was giving of its own light, just enough to see by. He was starting to tire of this surrealist landscape. He briefly pondered if he had wandered into Salvador Dali’s dreams but discarded the idea after not having come across any pocket watches dripping off of tree limbs.

His belly rumbled. His hunger pains were getting worse. He could feel his stomach eating its self. He had to get food and soon. He started jogging along, then stopped when he felt his lower leg bones flexing uncomfortably under the extra strain of jogging. The sensation sent shivers up his spine. Starving now he decided to eat some leaves just to have something in his belly. He plucked one off an oak tree and bit into it. He chewed for a full thirty seconds before he realized that there was nothing in his mouth. He looked at the leaf and saw that there was no bite taken out of it. Apparently in a two-dimensional forest you cant eat any thing because it is lacking depth. That is to say that there isn’t any thing to bite into. Frustrated, he tossed away the inedible leaf. And continued his trek through this bizarre landscape.

Some time later he came out of the woods behind a gas station. It was an old gas station from the 40’s. The bell line was a serpentine stripe across the driveway. There was a huge oil stain in the middle of the concrete that made it look like there was a bottomless pit leading straight to hell or china or some other place that bottomless pits are supposed to go. The red gas pump looked like a rocket ship preparing to take off as soon as the electrical umbilicus and scaffolding were removed. The wind blew for a moment and pushed the requisite tumbleweed passed the antique building.

He rounds the corner of this soberingly familiar city block and is confronted with a horrifying car accident. There is blood everywhere and at least two dead bodies. One of them looks to have been killed with a knife stuck in its head. People are starting to gather around the scene. A greasy motorcycle couple and a few bums poke their heads around the corner to see what had happened. A group of teenagers had seen the whole thing and were passing around a brown paper bag, each one taking a larger gulp than the previous round wishing to make this seem as un-real as possible.

He never stops to think this was not right, never realizes how familiar the faces in the ever increasing crowd are. He believes that he is still dreaming, or at least on some really good drugs. After a few moments the EMT’s arrive and begin disbursing the crowd. As he moves on to find out what he should do next he glances at the truck driver bending over his crumpled and torn body bursting into tears and weeping bitterly long into the night. Suddenly things begin to loose focus as understanding takes the place of confusion and a great shining light shines down on him. The source seems to be somewhere out on lake Michigan. He shrugs and heads off towards the light.

ATTENTION

underneath the stone,

there's more than just them bones,

underneath the stone,

there's a story to be told

underneath the stone

-Bob Wayne

a new and original tale that only i can provide will be posted here tomorrow. keep an eye out.