page 4
When we were feeling really stupid, we wound up at a club. There was a certain time of night when the crowds were thick and drunk enough to ignore Frankie's stench. We could clip in between the bodies, become indistinguishable from them as they drew close to the abyss, the precipice on which we were always camped. Nobody saw the glaze in my eyes or heard Frankie's deranged mutterings. I put on a collared shirt whose stains were assumed to be recently spilled beer.
This was the closest Frankie came to women. They seemed to enjoy talking to him in the dark and colored lights. Meanwhile I could put myself at the center of the crowd and feel them pulse around me, space shrinking to the edge of my shoulders, time down to the space between beats. "Roger, I got some cash in my pocket. Let's get drunk here."
"We ARE drunk. But okay." The nights' rhythms ran together: anticipation, euphoria, depression, daylight, regret. Noon was always the worst. Everything was closed and we were out of money. Reality dripped from the sky and straight down into the tops of our skulls. My eyes bugged out like tiny men were beating on their insides.
"I've got listerine in my pocket," Frankie'd say. "Want some?"
God yes.
Once, I found a dead man and his gun. He was fat as sin, with a monstrous head and a manicured beard on what remained of his chin. His index finger was still wrapped around the trigger.
"Let's rob that one grocery. I found a gun."
"Take the bullets out."
"What?"
"It's not armed robbery if the gun isn't loaded."
"Uh. Is that true?"
"How many bullets you got?"
I opened the revolver's cylinder. "5."
"That's five dead people. I don't like dead people, Roger."
"Fine." I tapped the bullets out and dropped them on a trash pile in the alley. The one empty casing, I kept in my pocket.
"Where'd you get that, anyway?"
"Dead guy." I was having dreams about dead guy. His head was as big and squishy as a watermelon and there was a tunnel straight through it, from his neck to his crown. If you could unlatch his face, there would be a hiss of escaping air and then you'd pull it off to see this deep groove running up where his brain met his eyesockets. "Still got that mouthwash, Frankie?"
So we held up the grocery store. It was a little place downtown, open all night. Nothing like where I worked, a cozy little mart, one teenage Mexican girl working the register and no one else. I never asked her where she was from or anything, I just thought of her as Mexican. They didn't have booze but there was plenty of free cash. While she was handing it to me, Frankie was busy stuffing his pockets with OTC pharmaceuticals. "This is stupid," he said. "There's a police station right down the street."
"She's not calling the cops, though. You're not, are you?"
"What if they come in here for donuts or something?"
She just looked at me and shrugged. She was kind of cute, but didn't seem like she wanted to talk to me.
"Ask her what she's into," Frankie called from the family planning aisle.
"She won't talk to me. Also what's this goop coming out of the fridges?"
Frankie called again while munching on a bag of chips. "Hey, you remember that scene in American History X, where they pour milk all over that immigrant?"
"Woww, you know how to kill the mood. Also, what the fuck is this goop?" Thick black sludge poured from the ice cream fridge and swept towards the front of the store. "Hurry uuuupp." I had the money. It was time to go before we were eaten alive.
"Does she have any hobbies?"
"Fuck, Frankie, we're gonna die!" The sludge was gobbling twinkies, snatching stacks of lottery tickets in its tendrils. It was like crude oil mixed with blood, starch, and marrow from Satan's broken femur.
"Finefine," he said. We made it out just as the goo pressed itself against the windows, exploding into the street in a shower of glass. The cute cashier was still standing submerged in it, watching me.
"Jesus, man, we barely made it out of there alive!"
"You're crazy, Roger."
"Whatever. Get any good pills?"
Monday, April 9, 2018
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
wastrels p. 4
Page 3
Current Page
I'd pissed away several years of college, and now I was pissing away whatever comes after that. A surreal feeling, because I had in my early 20s had daily premonitions of my own death in some horrible accident. But now I was here in my late 20s and still alive, living on stolen time. Sometimes I wondered, though. "Am I dead, Frankie?"
"Well if you are, I guess I am too."
The sky was overcast but bright, such that the concrete and big cement block buildings were saturated with pale light. It only enhanced my sense of being in some purgatory between worlds. At least the light rain hitting my forehead made me feel something. We were downtown on a street under the train tracks, headed off from that entertaining intersection I mentioned before. The shouts were still audible. I passed around a junkie. He was standing right on the corner, swaying back and forth with his gaze fixed on nothing, completely unaware of the people waiting for the crosswalk. And they pretended not to see him.
My own place was or had been nearer the outskirts of the city, but I'd always wanted one of those apartments that looked right out onto the train tracks, the bright red lights and constant rattle of subway cars; mostly so I'd have an excuse for why I couldn't sleep at night.
This was back before cell phones, so it was pretty easy to just fall off the map and hide from the people who cared about you. I'd had an answering machine back at my place, but it had this great button on it labelled 'Erase' that just deleted every message without even playing them. Though at this point, like I said, the continued existence of my living space and all my stuff was an academic matter at best.
There was one particular hotdog stand that I liked, and that's where we always went. The guy had prime real estate, right under the steps to the train, just down the street from a shitty park where some nutcase played electric guitar and sang songs about Armageddon washing away the blood of sinners. Hotdog stand guy was making a killing on the foot traffic, yet you could see that he hated them all. Whether they stopped for him or walked on by, his eyes were slitted and suspicious. He said $2.50 like it was a curse word, and if you asked for relish his hatred was hot enough to warm your hands over. I always asked for relish. Just knowing that he wanted to hurt me made my skin prickle.
The blackouts were getting worse. I was so good at it that I could skip large chunks of time just by drinking a couple beers. The little hints of existence that poked up through the haze were like the dreams I had when I slept: I didn't know or care what happened in them, I only knew that they were better. Aside from the robotic needs of my body, my only desire was to eliminate consciousness. The air in the other world was clear and bright. I was weightless. There were no headaches. No limits to time and space. But the best part was that it wasn't real.
It was the same when we sat for hours in the cafe and I stared at Jane. I could see her and even touch her finger, but she wasn't real. She was weightless, clean, bright, and I could imagine beaten down in exactly the way that I was. In my mind, her anger was epic. I could feel immense power building in it, energy that would soon burst from her eyes and fists and mouth in a firestorm big enough to consume the city. She was a fucking superhero.
Current Page
I'd pissed away several years of college, and now I was pissing away whatever comes after that. A surreal feeling, because I had in my early 20s had daily premonitions of my own death in some horrible accident. But now I was here in my late 20s and still alive, living on stolen time. Sometimes I wondered, though. "Am I dead, Frankie?"
"Well if you are, I guess I am too."
The sky was overcast but bright, such that the concrete and big cement block buildings were saturated with pale light. It only enhanced my sense of being in some purgatory between worlds. At least the light rain hitting my forehead made me feel something. We were downtown on a street under the train tracks, headed off from that entertaining intersection I mentioned before. The shouts were still audible. I passed around a junkie. He was standing right on the corner, swaying back and forth with his gaze fixed on nothing, completely unaware of the people waiting for the crosswalk. And they pretended not to see him.
My own place was or had been nearer the outskirts of the city, but I'd always wanted one of those apartments that looked right out onto the train tracks, the bright red lights and constant rattle of subway cars; mostly so I'd have an excuse for why I couldn't sleep at night.
This was back before cell phones, so it was pretty easy to just fall off the map and hide from the people who cared about you. I'd had an answering machine back at my place, but it had this great button on it labelled 'Erase' that just deleted every message without even playing them. Though at this point, like I said, the continued existence of my living space and all my stuff was an academic matter at best.
There was one particular hotdog stand that I liked, and that's where we always went. The guy had prime real estate, right under the steps to the train, just down the street from a shitty park where some nutcase played electric guitar and sang songs about Armageddon washing away the blood of sinners. Hotdog stand guy was making a killing on the foot traffic, yet you could see that he hated them all. Whether they stopped for him or walked on by, his eyes were slitted and suspicious. He said $2.50 like it was a curse word, and if you asked for relish his hatred was hot enough to warm your hands over. I always asked for relish. Just knowing that he wanted to hurt me made my skin prickle.
The blackouts were getting worse. I was so good at it that I could skip large chunks of time just by drinking a couple beers. The little hints of existence that poked up through the haze were like the dreams I had when I slept: I didn't know or care what happened in them, I only knew that they were better. Aside from the robotic needs of my body, my only desire was to eliminate consciousness. The air in the other world was clear and bright. I was weightless. There were no headaches. No limits to time and space. But the best part was that it wasn't real.
It was the same when we sat for hours in the cafe and I stared at Jane. I could see her and even touch her finger, but she wasn't real. She was weightless, clean, bright, and I could imagine beaten down in exactly the way that I was. In my mind, her anger was epic. I could feel immense power building in it, energy that would soon burst from her eyes and fists and mouth in a firestorm big enough to consume the city. She was a fucking superhero.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
wastrels p.3
Page 1
Page 2
Current Page:
"There is no meaning in the world!"
"What does that even mean, Yak?" His name was Jakob which he said with a Y, so we called him Yak.
"I can't tell you, because there is no meaning!"
"Good talk." I tried to ignore whatever else he wanted to say. His full name was Yak Sand, I guess. He was always in the cafe, always smoking cigarettes, shouting out of his mouth, and not ordering anything. I liked to imagine that Jane hated him more than she hated me because that made me happy. "What do you think, Jane?"
"You both make some good points." She stood waiting for an order, holding her pencil like a dagger.
"Ah, you're just saying that."
"I _am_ just saying that." She had a temper yet it was her job to be nice. She vibrated from the constant effort of holding it in, a vein pulsing on her neck, a twitch in her right eye, a package full of glorious bloodshed that she wouldn't be able to hold in forever. Beautiful. I wanted to be there when she finally snapped.
"Frankie, let's go on an adventure. I'm bored." We were still at the cafe. Or maybe we were there again.
"How do we do that?"
"I dunno. Let's get shit-faced."
"We did that yesterday."
"Well how did people used to go on adventures? Strike out into the wilderness?"
"Off the edge of the map."
"Get press-ganged?"
"Get cholera."
"Shoot animals?"
"Shoot natives."
"Invade a country?"
"Discover a civilization."
"Can we do that stuff now?"
"Not really."
"Whaddawe do, Frankie?"
"We could go to a different bar than usual."
Blackouts were my primary mode of travel, and filled with phantom hours that I could only assume I had enjoyed. "That'll do. Jane! Check, please. I'm getting the dry-shakes over here."
"No, you've been drinking coffee all day."
Frankie lurched to his feet. "My God, she's right, Roger. We need downers, stat! I feel horribly lucid." He held his filthy hands before his face, stared at his own palms in horror. I couldn't have agreed more. I was starting to see the shapes of people again. A woman at the counter showing her spine. A man whose eyes slid beneath folds of skin. His rat-monkey children were shrieking and scratching themselves. The younger one still had a second set of teeth hiding in his face.
"Let's get out of here."
Page 2
Current Page:
"There is no meaning in the world!"
"What does that even mean, Yak?" His name was Jakob which he said with a Y, so we called him Yak.
"I can't tell you, because there is no meaning!"
"Good talk." I tried to ignore whatever else he wanted to say. His full name was Yak Sand, I guess. He was always in the cafe, always smoking cigarettes, shouting out of his mouth, and not ordering anything. I liked to imagine that Jane hated him more than she hated me because that made me happy. "What do you think, Jane?"
"You both make some good points." She stood waiting for an order, holding her pencil like a dagger.
"Ah, you're just saying that."
"I _am_ just saying that." She had a temper yet it was her job to be nice. She vibrated from the constant effort of holding it in, a vein pulsing on her neck, a twitch in her right eye, a package full of glorious bloodshed that she wouldn't be able to hold in forever. Beautiful. I wanted to be there when she finally snapped.
"Frankie, let's go on an adventure. I'm bored." We were still at the cafe. Or maybe we were there again.
"How do we do that?"
"I dunno. Let's get shit-faced."
"We did that yesterday."
"Well how did people used to go on adventures? Strike out into the wilderness?"
"Off the edge of the map."
"Get press-ganged?"
"Get cholera."
"Shoot animals?"
"Shoot natives."
"Invade a country?"
"Discover a civilization."
"Can we do that stuff now?"
"Not really."
"Whaddawe do, Frankie?"
"We could go to a different bar than usual."
Blackouts were my primary mode of travel, and filled with phantom hours that I could only assume I had enjoyed. "That'll do. Jane! Check, please. I'm getting the dry-shakes over here."
"No, you've been drinking coffee all day."
Frankie lurched to his feet. "My God, she's right, Roger. We need downers, stat! I feel horribly lucid." He held his filthy hands before his face, stared at his own palms in horror. I couldn't have agreed more. I was starting to see the shapes of people again. A woman at the counter showing her spine. A man whose eyes slid beneath folds of skin. His rat-monkey children were shrieking and scratching themselves. The younger one still had a second set of teeth hiding in his face.
"Let's get out of here."
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
wastrels
Part 1
Current Part:
I was committed to a relationship with a girl named Jane, though she didn't know it. She worked 6 or 7 days a week at a cafe by the park, which we frequented on Frankie's dime. She had straight, black hair and a prominent nose. She wore an apron over her skirt. She had that dead look in her eyes of a woman who believes nothing can harm her anymore.
"Jane, another coffee please."
Her frown would deepen. "You got it." She had to wear her first name on her chest, so she couldn't really stop me from acting familiar with her. I could tell it bothered her.
I couldn't stop watching her. The only thing that drew my eyes away was the pack of pigeons shitting on the outside of the window sill. The coffee was terrible, but I'd never really cared about that. Everything tasted of ashes.
In the summer we sat near the open door so Frankie wouldn't stink up the place. "Don't embarrass me, Frankie," I'd say.
"You embarrass yourself."
---
I got a job at the same Walmart I used to steal from, which was convenient. But God the people there. I worked the freak shift, the witching hour. Which was great, because those customers never wanted to talk to anyone. They were deformed, sad proto-humans; blobs in electric wheelchairs; women with sickening face injuries. There was a manager on duty, but she never left her office at night. I mostly just wandered the aisles with a mop, drifting in the fog from my own nostrils. Sometimes Frankie came to visit me in the stock room, to haul away any damaged merchandise in his shopping cart.
One time we got robbed. I was in the back, though. I walked up to the cashier later and she said, "Someone took all my money." She opened the drawer to show me. It was empty.
"Did he have a gun or something?"
"Nah, he just reached over and took it."
"Did you tell security? That guy with the big neck, right?"
She didn't seem to hear me.
Anyways, the liquor store was in the same parking lot, so it was easy to just hit it up with my paycheck. Check to cash places are everywhere. I always got RC Cola as a mixer cause my initials were on it.
I shared the results with Frankie, and then he'd say, "I found a bag of grass under the bridge man." Then we'd just sort of float off down the highway. The lights were bright like a football stadium, glowing billboards everywhere.
We couldn't see the stars from anywhere near the city but just the same I could look up and wonder. Obviously, there were other planets up there with other (ever freakier looking) people on them, but I wondered if there was another me, someone I could really relate to, even more than I could to Frankie. A total loser. A wastrel.
---
The weekly tradition was for the boss to call me upstairs when I came in for my shift, before he left for his daywalker life. His tie and skin were both glossy. "Siddown Robert."
"Thanks."
"You know what your problem is, Robert?"
"What, sir?"
"You don't want to participate."
"Sir?"
He would turn to the window that looked down on the clothing department and cast his voice into the distance. "People like me have built this glorious civilization..."
"Yessir."
"And people like you just want to tear it down because there's no place for you in it."
"Yessir."
"Fortunately!" He'd turn back to me then and remove his sunglasses with a flourish. "You're too weak and choleric to do any real damage."
"Yessir."
"So people like me will continue to provide your kind with food and shelter for whatever modest labor you can provide with that husk of yours."
"Thank you, sir."
He liked my attitude. "I like your attitude, Robert. Good talk! You may leave me now."
"Enjoy your evening, sir." I'd shuffle down to my mop, most weeks too blazed to remember what he'd said to me up there.
---
"Frankie, we're getting out of here."
"Howzzat?"
We were by the highway again, lying on the pavement. I think it was morning already because I could see the clouds. "Stick up your thumb. We'll hitch a ride." We stuck our thumbs up to the sky.
Sometimes we did hitch a ride, but it was just to downtown. Everything was too expensive, but we could ride the subway around for a while or stand on the street corner. One intersection was great because the people there were always shouting at each other. Horrible, hateful comments. "Do you think they know each other, Frankie?"
"I can't tell." He'd found a ratty armchair and a bag of popcorn somewhere. "Doesn't sound like it."
I always thought I'd see violence there, but instead they'd curse each other breathless and then sort of stumble away. "Let's go see Jane."
"Okay." Frankie never made a decision. He would just wait for someone else to make him stand up and go. "I could sit here forever, though."
"I know you could."
Current Part:
I was committed to a relationship with a girl named Jane, though she didn't know it. She worked 6 or 7 days a week at a cafe by the park, which we frequented on Frankie's dime. She had straight, black hair and a prominent nose. She wore an apron over her skirt. She had that dead look in her eyes of a woman who believes nothing can harm her anymore.
"Jane, another coffee please."
Her frown would deepen. "You got it." She had to wear her first name on her chest, so she couldn't really stop me from acting familiar with her. I could tell it bothered her.
I couldn't stop watching her. The only thing that drew my eyes away was the pack of pigeons shitting on the outside of the window sill. The coffee was terrible, but I'd never really cared about that. Everything tasted of ashes.
In the summer we sat near the open door so Frankie wouldn't stink up the place. "Don't embarrass me, Frankie," I'd say.
"You embarrass yourself."
---
I got a job at the same Walmart I used to steal from, which was convenient. But God the people there. I worked the freak shift, the witching hour. Which was great, because those customers never wanted to talk to anyone. They were deformed, sad proto-humans; blobs in electric wheelchairs; women with sickening face injuries. There was a manager on duty, but she never left her office at night. I mostly just wandered the aisles with a mop, drifting in the fog from my own nostrils. Sometimes Frankie came to visit me in the stock room, to haul away any damaged merchandise in his shopping cart.
One time we got robbed. I was in the back, though. I walked up to the cashier later and she said, "Someone took all my money." She opened the drawer to show me. It was empty.
"Did he have a gun or something?"
"Nah, he just reached over and took it."
"Did you tell security? That guy with the big neck, right?"
She didn't seem to hear me.
Anyways, the liquor store was in the same parking lot, so it was easy to just hit it up with my paycheck. Check to cash places are everywhere. I always got RC Cola as a mixer cause my initials were on it.
I shared the results with Frankie, and then he'd say, "I found a bag of grass under the bridge man." Then we'd just sort of float off down the highway. The lights were bright like a football stadium, glowing billboards everywhere.
We couldn't see the stars from anywhere near the city but just the same I could look up and wonder. Obviously, there were other planets up there with other (ever freakier looking) people on them, but I wondered if there was another me, someone I could really relate to, even more than I could to Frankie. A total loser. A wastrel.
---
The weekly tradition was for the boss to call me upstairs when I came in for my shift, before he left for his daywalker life. His tie and skin were both glossy. "Siddown Robert."
"Thanks."
"You know what your problem is, Robert?"
"What, sir?"
"You don't want to participate."
"Sir?"
He would turn to the window that looked down on the clothing department and cast his voice into the distance. "People like me have built this glorious civilization..."
"Yessir."
"And people like you just want to tear it down because there's no place for you in it."
"Yessir."
"Fortunately!" He'd turn back to me then and remove his sunglasses with a flourish. "You're too weak and choleric to do any real damage."
"Yessir."
"So people like me will continue to provide your kind with food and shelter for whatever modest labor you can provide with that husk of yours."
"Thank you, sir."
He liked my attitude. "I like your attitude, Robert. Good talk! You may leave me now."
"Enjoy your evening, sir." I'd shuffle down to my mop, most weeks too blazed to remember what he'd said to me up there.
---
"Frankie, we're getting out of here."
"Howzzat?"
We were by the highway again, lying on the pavement. I think it was morning already because I could see the clouds. "Stick up your thumb. We'll hitch a ride." We stuck our thumbs up to the sky.
Sometimes we did hitch a ride, but it was just to downtown. Everything was too expensive, but we could ride the subway around for a while or stand on the street corner. One intersection was great because the people there were always shouting at each other. Horrible, hateful comments. "Do you think they know each other, Frankie?"
"I can't tell." He'd found a ratty armchair and a bag of popcorn somewhere. "Doesn't sound like it."
I always thought I'd see violence there, but instead they'd curse each other breathless and then sort of stumble away. "Let's go see Jane."
"Okay." Frankie never made a decision. He would just wait for someone else to make him stand up and go. "I could sit here forever, though."
"I know you could."
Friday, March 9, 2018
I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart
I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart where I'd gone to purchase a series of jackets when I started to noticed people popping and exploding around me. The soup cans in the canned soup aisle were covered in pink slime with a consistency between jello and cake frosting. Bits of grey matter had glommed to the shelving, still twitching with the vitality of baby octopi. Two aisles down, a fat woman's neck was eating itself. She panted and gurgled in pain as she bent over for a 40-pack of snot-colored sport drink.
---
Frankie Bacon was my best friend but not for any length of time. I'd met him the Tuesday before in a park, where he was wringing the neck of every pigeon he could get his hands on. Then they went into the pile hidden behind a couple bushes but still sure to be discovered. Everything out of Frankie's mouth made me smile then laugh then cry, even his toxic breath. "Roger," he'd say, "do you think people will ever stop dying?"
"What do you mean?" I'd say. "What people?"
"All people. They just keep dying. Like all the fucking time. When will it stop?" Then I'd notice the tears leaking from his eyes.
"I dunno. Once there are no more people, I guess."
So he'd take a snort from the vial hanging around his neck, the one labelled 'Smelling Salts' with a sharpie, and grin: "That's right, isn't it!?"
I was in love with Frankie for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was that despite looking like and being a bum, he always seemed to have just enough cash to cover whatever we were doing. A crumpled twenty forgotten in his coat pocket or a thick roll of singles. Myself, I think I had a job or something, but whatever they paid me went quickly to bottles of everclear and hotdogs. I hadn't been to my apartment in long enough that I couldn't really prove that it was still there. But the idea of its continued existence was comforting.
The other thing I loved about Frankie was that he was ugly as shit. He was short, fat, and wrinkly. He could've been the lovechild of John Belushi and a rat. His hair started halfway back his scalp and from there lived the life of a rowdy teenager; curling, poofing, starting up punk bands, and sometimes catching on fire. Just by standing there, he made me feel handsome and young.
---
Frankie Bacon was my best friend but not for any length of time. I'd met him the Tuesday before in a park, where he was wringing the neck of every pigeon he could get his hands on. Then they went into the pile hidden behind a couple bushes but still sure to be discovered. Everything out of Frankie's mouth made me smile then laugh then cry, even his toxic breath. "Roger," he'd say, "do you think people will ever stop dying?"
"What do you mean?" I'd say. "What people?"
"All people. They just keep dying. Like all the fucking time. When will it stop?" Then I'd notice the tears leaking from his eyes.
"I dunno. Once there are no more people, I guess."
So he'd take a snort from the vial hanging around his neck, the one labelled 'Smelling Salts' with a sharpie, and grin: "That's right, isn't it!?"
I was in love with Frankie for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was that despite looking like and being a bum, he always seemed to have just enough cash to cover whatever we were doing. A crumpled twenty forgotten in his coat pocket or a thick roll of singles. Myself, I think I had a job or something, but whatever they paid me went quickly to bottles of everclear and hotdogs. I hadn't been to my apartment in long enough that I couldn't really prove that it was still there. But the idea of its continued existence was comforting.
The other thing I loved about Frankie was that he was ugly as shit. He was short, fat, and wrinkly. He could've been the lovechild of John Belushi and a rat. His hair started halfway back his scalp and from there lived the life of a rowdy teenager; curling, poofing, starting up punk bands, and sometimes catching on fire. Just by standing there, he made me feel handsome and young.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Who is Pekanese Blue?
"Seems like scary stuff. But mostly, we alter lines of code. There's very little actual piloting done these days. Tweaking facial recognition software, alignment with the GPS (though that's rapidly approaching perfection), improving how the intelligence handles infrared distinction..."
"Uh-huh." Scotty screwed up his eyes to express his boredom, completely lost on his talking partner.
"If I'm being honest," the twat whispered, "we don't really even code. The algorithms have been capable of making their own adjustments for years now."
"Orly?"
"Fortunately, most higher-ups can't tell the difference. Generated code looks the same as handwritten: gibberish vs. more gibberish."
Scotty blew a bubble in his $20 coffee. He'd bet he had a 20 in his jacket somewhere, but he'd planned to dash even if Twat hadn't offered to pay. "You'll be techsourced, soon enough [[ya twat]]," he said [[and thought]].
"Oh, I don't doubt it." The guy lit a $20 cigarette and smirked. "But I'm hoping I'll be dead by then. Shit takes time. Or maybe I'll hear that buzz like a dog-sized bee myself one day, huh? My own function busting my head like a watermelon?" He put it out and took out another one, in case the girls at the next table hadn't seen how smooth he looked lighting it. "That'd be some kind of poetry, right? You seem like the poetic type."
"That's right."
He lost his stare in the middle distance somewhere. "Where would I go? I don't have the scruples for marketing." A puff of smoke twatted from between his lips.
"Sure."
"And a place like this? Café work (he emphasized the diacritic on the second syllable) just feels...beneath me. Ya feel me?"
"I feel you." He felt icky. But well caffeinated, damn.
"Anyway, Transient, thanks for the chat." He put the butt out. "I get bored between shifts. And during. And sometimes while sleeping... I'm not selling it super well, but you wanna go corporate, I've got your back. You seem like a smart guy. Or good at hiding idiocy. Either way works in the biz, whatever the biz is." He handed Scotty a bizness card, decorated with gold-embossed lightning bolts.
German Special
Expert Ninja Coder
and Professional Twat
Scotty turned it in his hands and said, "Wow."
"That's right, bud. Shall we get the check? Miss?! Little Miss! Yeah, you."
She came over with a glossy smile and tried to nab the card he held out while avoiding his fingers.
Scotty tried to slip in a couple platitudes before he slipped out, but found them dying to the far off whine of a bumblebee which he imagined to be somewhere between the size of a dog and a buffalo.
German lit a final cigarette and openly ogled the women at the next table. "Sounds like a plus-sized model. Same software, though. We should probably be flattered. Something knows we exist, at least for the moment." He smiled. His teeth were the beyond-yellow of coffee and cigarettes. "Anyway, it's been sweet."
Obligated to do so, Scotty Transient tried as hard as he could to think of something poetic to add, but the only two thoughts he could have were [[I've wasted my entire life.]] or [[My brain feels like Jell-O right now.]] Neither one seemed up to his own standards, so he was still thinking as the room filled with fire and shrapnel; too fast to process, too slow to escape.
"Uh-huh." Scotty screwed up his eyes to express his boredom, completely lost on his talking partner.
"If I'm being honest," the twat whispered, "we don't really even code. The algorithms have been capable of making their own adjustments for years now."
"Orly?"
"Fortunately, most higher-ups can't tell the difference. Generated code looks the same as handwritten: gibberish vs. more gibberish."
Scotty blew a bubble in his $20 coffee. He'd bet he had a 20 in his jacket somewhere, but he'd planned to dash even if Twat hadn't offered to pay. "You'll be techsourced, soon enough [[ya twat]]," he said [[and thought]].
"Oh, I don't doubt it." The guy lit a $20 cigarette and smirked. "But I'm hoping I'll be dead by then. Shit takes time. Or maybe I'll hear that buzz like a dog-sized bee myself one day, huh? My own function busting my head like a watermelon?" He put it out and took out another one, in case the girls at the next table hadn't seen how smooth he looked lighting it. "That'd be some kind of poetry, right? You seem like the poetic type."
"That's right."
He lost his stare in the middle distance somewhere. "Where would I go? I don't have the scruples for marketing." A puff of smoke twatted from between his lips.
"Sure."
"And a place like this? Café work (he emphasized the diacritic on the second syllable) just feels...beneath me. Ya feel me?"
"I feel you." He felt icky. But well caffeinated, damn.
"Anyway, Transient, thanks for the chat." He put the butt out. "I get bored between shifts. And during. And sometimes while sleeping... I'm not selling it super well, but you wanna go corporate, I've got your back. You seem like a smart guy. Or good at hiding idiocy. Either way works in the biz, whatever the biz is." He handed Scotty a bizness card, decorated with gold-embossed lightning bolts.
German Special
Expert Ninja Coder
and Professional Twat
Scotty turned it in his hands and said, "Wow."
"That's right, bud. Shall we get the check? Miss?! Little Miss! Yeah, you."
She came over with a glossy smile and tried to nab the card he held out while avoiding his fingers.
Scotty tried to slip in a couple platitudes before he slipped out, but found them dying to the far off whine of a bumblebee which he imagined to be somewhere between the size of a dog and a buffalo.
German lit a final cigarette and openly ogled the women at the next table. "Sounds like a plus-sized model. Same software, though. We should probably be flattered. Something knows we exist, at least for the moment." He smiled. His teeth were the beyond-yellow of coffee and cigarettes. "Anyway, it's been sweet."
Obligated to do so, Scotty Transient tried as hard as he could to think of something poetic to add, but the only two thoughts he could have were [[I've wasted my entire life.]] or [[My brain feels like Jell-O right now.]] Neither one seemed up to his own standards, so he was still thinking as the room filled with fire and shrapnel; too fast to process, too slow to escape.
Monday, March 13, 2017
In the Woods, Venus Waited
camping out beneath stars, the smell of pine deep in stinging his nostrils till he thought a capillary or two might burst, he remembered instead the smell of the bourbon drifting back through his throat when he sat in the alley, watching the cats skulk, the rats creep, and the headlines proclaiming the end of society. when he looked up, the brick wall across from him was still real, a flawed pattern, its consistency just inconsistent enough to get forever lost in if he'd been an ant on his way home. he took another pull, and he was back in the woods, Venus bright and foggy high above. It was this moment, the first time he ever realized that he would never go there. That he was forever stuck in the corner of the room, looking out but unable to move.
A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
"Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
He brought his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
"Hey bud."
"I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
Somewhere. Was it here?
Would he have to stand? Could he?
No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up.
A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
"Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
He brought his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
"Hey bud."
"I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
Somewhere. Was it here?
Would he have to stand? Could he?
No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up.
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