War Machine

Woke up in an unfamiliar place, on an air-mattress, like Q. Forgotten I'd crashed an hour south of my humble home. Too much merriment. I've woken and seen videographic proof of myself performing magic - defying the laws of physics. Surely I am an unawakened warlock. With a warcock.

Brandi

Brandi had snakeskin lips. She wore boots of ivory leather and she smoked. Her hair was wild, dirty and blonde. When the sun hit it it glowed, drawing a golden halo around her head, ironically, because it was the only resemblance she bore to an angel. She lived in the poor part of town, with her alcoholic mother, and was fortunate enough to have those high cheekbones, the kind that could airlift a girl out of the lower class. Her mother had named her Brandy, as a joke, because that's what she'd been drinking the night she was conceived. After she'd said it a few times though, she found she liked it and the name stuck. She spelled it with an i now, Brandi did. A modeling agency had found her one day when she'd gone into the city for a pregnancy test, which, luckily for her (and the would-be baby) had come back negative. As she was crossing the street a man with a clipboard and a camera-rig approached her, impeccably dressed, with black hair and bright blue eyes, and he asked her if she had any interest in modeling. He explained that she had natural talent; it was in the way she walked; her balance, the grace in her shoulders, the length of her stride, that sharp mystifying quality her eyes had. But most of all it was her mischevious smile; the way it seemed to slither; the way it could make something in a man writhe.

Brandi was twenty-one at the time. She had developed an interest in boys and would coil herself around their hearts torturously, squeezing out every last drop of love til they were dried out. When her second boyfriend had killed himself after their breakup, she'd felt guilt not over his death, but because she'd derived pleasure from the idea of a man dying of grief over her. She had, of course, never truly been in love, and instead only sought companionship in the form of physical indlugence, chewing them up like gum until they lost flavor. And it was at the age of twenty-one when, through her modeling agency, she was afforded certain covetous luxuries; exotic travel, exquisite clothing and dresses, invitations to elite parties, the interest of rich people with money to spend.

This began to fill those around her with envy. After all, she was a woman of a very invidious beauty. The few true friends she did have were put off by her newfound habits. When they would go out to parties together they were made to feel like Brandi's dirty clothes, old used up rags cast aside and hidden behind a cabinet under the sink. They hated her feigned laughter which she showered upon her new friends, the superficiality of their conversation. Her industry friends flaunted their opulence sinfully, spending exorbitant sums on things like specialty facial mosturizers, handbags, hotels restaurants and yachts. One especially loud and arrogant man with perfectly manicured eyebrows and a painstakingly kempt quiff of auburn hair, complained how the rising costs of gas made travel in his private jet more inconvenient, but not more infrequent (he casually added). Brandi would conveniently find herself separated from her friends, only happening upon them as she was leaving the party - on the arm of another well-quiffed man. "I was looking all over for you guys; splendid party, don't you think," she'd ask, almost rhetorically. Splendid wasn't a word they'd ever heard her use in her life.

This was when her already tenuous relationship with her mother had reached its absolute breaking point. Her mother had grown jealous of her daughter's socialite lifestyle, and she was driven mad by the vibrance of her youth. She resented Brandi for her good fortune, and she feared, in time, that she would desert her (though she hadn't yet). Her mother would drink and say things like: "It'll fade - all beauty fades, princess. Look at me. I looked like you once, not so long ago," or "These people don't like you, they're only interested in you for your looks, and where will you be when that fades? You'll see. You'll see what happens to us (women)." One night, in a drunken fit of rage, her mother had taken a pair of scissors to an expensive dress that had been given to Brandi as a gift. After it had been shred to tatters, it stood as an unequivocal symbol of her mother's disdain for her, and in turn, Brandi's disdain for her mother.

Things worsened between them quite quickly. Brandi acted with spite toward her mother, parading around the house in front of mirrors while wearing designer dresses and high-heel shoes, touching and retouching her face and hair from one mirror to the next. She made an effort to pass her mother no matter where she was in the house, to rub it in. She started leaving blouses, belts and boots around the house in rumpled piles, like they were salvation army hand-me-downs, to show her mother just how much luxury she'd acquired. When she'd come home at night, drunk, she'd open the door loudly and giggle bad-intentionedly, she'd drop things and scream HONEY, I'M HOME! It wasn't that she had to go home - because she didn't - she liked going home: to show her mother that she was better than her, to show her how little she needed her now.

"Do you ever miss dad," she asked, the last time she'd gone home, when she'd stumbled in drunk at 4:30 in the morning smelling like smoke and whiskey. "Do you ever wonder why he left you," she continued, "I think it's because he knew you weren't going to get any better than you were then; he knew that eventually you'd just be an old wrinkled drunk with a worn-out pussy."

Brandi's mother hadn't replied. She just sat there looking up at the old wooden ceiling-fan, smoke-stained and spinning. Brandi enjoyed that she'd hurt her mother so deeply that she couldn't look at her. "I've decided: I'm leaving. Tomorrow. No, wait, today. I'm packing my things and moving in with Preston, to his penthouse," she said, more to herself than to her mother. As she left the room to pack, she said: "It will be splendid."

Brandi packed, completely unaware she had missed something. She didn't realize it as she sauntered out of the house into Preston's Tesla, either. She was only finally made aware of it four days later - when the smell of rot, its sillage augmented by the scorching summer heat, had alerted the neighbors.

This death upset her, too. Not because her mother was dead though, but because her mother was able to leave her before she did.

Territorialized

He walks by in the morning, before the sun is fully risen, his hands in his pockets, shielded from the wind. Every day at almost the same time he passes, and though his clothes may be different, his face is always the same; tired, barren, defeated. Today he looks especially rough, his pants and shirt badly wrinkled, stained by spilled coffe, wearing half untied shoes and unkempt hair, he trudges through the street with his shoulders rolled, like he's walking through snow. He vanishes and a jogger appears, red in the face and panting, sporting a white T-shirt and blue shorts. She does not look familiar. The bushes whisper and thrash excitedly as she approaches, throwing off wind to fan her face. Her strong green eyes are bright and alert; they move around surveying the sidewalk, glowing in the dawn. In a moment, all that remains of her is a drop of sweat that fell from her elbow onto the cement.

Soon parents can be seen packing their children into cars, buckling their seatbelts and handing them their lunchboxes, ready to drive them off to school.

Fog blows by and rises, forming clouds, blotting out the light, promising rain; they will give us a good drink. The back of my leg feels wet and I see a dog scurry away after I've been marked, territorialized.

None of us speak - there isn't a reason to. We stare out over houses and await the rain. And when the rain passes, we await the sun. And when the sun passes we await the night, when the birds, tired and afraid, come to rest upon our outstretched arms like little coal-colored Christmas ornaments. Once the sun returns, the people do, too.

I often wonder why they move at all; why the woman in the blue shorts runs when she is not being chased.

In Memoriam

Sweet merciful Memorial Day. It's just a memory now, one that still rolls and rattles around in my skull with the cyclical monotony of an old machine dryer. 

My head feels like a vaccum bag that's about to burst; full of dust and small spiders, old cheerios. 

In truth, I was helpless. The day was perfect: sunny, warm, peaceable; how was anyone to resist?

I think I'm done with drinking for a while now - as soon as I finish that growler of beer in my fridge. 

Sunshine

Mornin' sunshine. That's what she'd say, Mani would. Ever since that moment I saw her in the window of that boutique, as though she were on display. Her curves were perfect, cut out of a mold; she had long slender limbs, and her skin was flawlessly smooth. Pygmalion himself couldn't have produced a more desirable body. I knew I had to have her. The way she would pose and model with such poise, and her sense of fashion, too. Though, in honesty, I cared more for the fashion of her anatomy.

It took much courage and determination, but I knew I had to make her mine. So I returned later that night to convince her to come with me. There was much yelling and some commotion because she was still at work, and her employers had no intention of allowing her to leave before her work was through, but I made a most compelling case. In our haste, I realized she wore a wig; it had fallen off as we charged madly toward the door, Mani clutched under might right arm like a football, when the wig jostled itself free from her head. She was mortified, to have her secret revealed in such a hurried and unintentional way, but to me she became even more beautiful. The ever so slight loss of grace, that tender vulnerability in her eyes, it humanized her, made her less like a goddess and more like girl.

That was a year ago this May. Things have not been so copacetic between us as of late, and I fear she resents me. Up until this point we adored one another. We shared the deepest affections. We would cook together, and dance, lie in bed and talk about the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. I had bought her an assortment of beautiful, elegant wigs with which to adorn her beautiful head. Her favorite actress was Kim Cattrall, and she loved nothing more than to situate herself in front of a window, basking in the sun, being admired by the passerby's. Soon though, I began to worry about how much time she spent in the window. Surely that much exposure to the sun's rays couldn't be good for her skin. And the expressions on the faces of those who passed were not always smiling and pleasantly surprised, they were sometimes mean or fearful or disgusted by her ensembles.

It was around this time that we had become sexually intimate, and she would stand in front of the window wearing only panties, or a bra, or sometimes a see-through nightie. Sometimes, after we made love she would ask me why I never took her anywhere. She never understood how modest my income was; the most trifling purchases to her where serious indulgences to me; she had expensive taste. At night, while she slept, I would often remain awake, unable to sleep; thoughts of being incapable of pleasing her, of being unfit to keep her satisfied and happy plagued my tired mind, turned them into nightmares. Once, I dreamt she ran off with some affluent young man that had seen her standing in the window. He had a beard and brilliant blue eyes. Sleepless nights made me irritable and crass in my dealings with her. All I wanted after I came home from a long day of work at the factory was to feel loved, wanted. But I would arrive and find her standing in the same spot I had left her, the house a mess, not a backward glance or a word from her.

She'd become cold and hard and what little pleasantries we did share together began to dissolve. On an especially bad day, when I had come home late from work, I found her lying in bed. She looked ill, slightly purple. She told me she was fine, that she was exhausted from exercise. She invited me to bed and inveigled me out of my pants with lust-filled eyes, coaxing it out sensuously with her practiced hands. I mounted her and began pumping into her, being absolved by her, when her face changed. She wore a cold unexpressive smile and told me I would never be able to satisfy her, not like he could. The words pained me deeply, and I lost all desire for sex. I left the bedroom and went into the bathroom, thinking a shower might help. Of all the things she could've said to me, this was the worst. My deepest fear and insecurity had been made real - a nightmare brought to life. How could I look at her again, or share anything with her now; how could I trust her? Standing in the shower I felt sick, like I would throw up. I didn't want to think about any thing. I imagined that as long as the water was on, I was safe in temporary exile from the hardness of reality. The warm, soft heat ran down my skin and did not resist me; it was kind, and gentle. After some time, the water began to grow cold and my skin grew soggy.

I looked down at my hands and there was something wrong with them. They had the white calloused patchwork of plaster and looked blistered and bruised. In the mirror my eyes were bloodshot and tired. The mirror itself was filthy, full of soapscum and toothpaste, and the surrounding area was mottled with aged stubble that had been sheared from someone's face. Not my own. Ever since I was a boy I was never able to grow a beard, and I shaved very infrequently because of this. This hair was not my own. I inspected the room more carefully and found more evidence of an intruder: an empty bottle of a cologne I'd never seen, the smell of an unfamiliar soap, Old Spice moisturizer. These were not my own. I'll be damned if someone is going to come into my house and make a cuckold out of me. Leaving these things here that are not my own. Telling me that my woman is not my own. That my own sense of myself is not my own.

I rip open the bathroom door and stare at her savagely. She knows. It excites her. You've seen his toiletries, she says wryly. I trudge toward her, my rage makes my steps mechanical, wearing down on my heels like lead. The blood sleds through the slopes inside my icy veins, squealing past the drum in my inner ear. With licentious fury I latch onto her leg and yank it from the socket at her knee. I do the same to the other one. She doesn't make a sound. No more standing in the window, I shout. Though this satisfies me, I realize it won't be enough. I can see it in her face, mocking me. This won't stop me, she seems to say. Then it hits me: it's over. I'll treat her the way she wants to be treated, then; like trash. I take her in my arms and pull her torso from her abdomen. It dislocates with a hollow pop, like a champagne cork. Somehow, in this moment, she looks more beautiful than ever before. But I cannot - will not - fall for her allure this time. The feeling that I am making a mistake washes over me, and I wave it away. It is only the fear of change, of loneliness. As I grab her bust she grabs onto me; wrapping her arms around me she squeezes me tightly and says she's sorry. She is sincere but it is too late - our love has been dismantled. I drag her out to the street, the neighbors stare, and I toss her into the gutter.

Her anus looks incredibly small. I wonder how I ever fit inside it.

Folgers in Your Cup

Well kiddies, it's over. The seal has been broken. This morning I sharted. Yep, you heard it here first. It happened on an unremarkable morning; I woke up, burned 20 minutes snoozing my alarm and indulging myself with waking-cat stretches before I finally roused myself out of bed. A tremendous piss swelled in my bladder like a dammed up Niagra Falls, so I promptly walked to the bathroom to unleash my deluge. Standing at the bowl, in my blue polkadotted boxers and tube socks, I leaned into the experience, arching back with my hand on my hip, urinating like a champion sharpshooter. As is usually the case, the relaxing of my muscles knocked loose a pent up fart, rolling down through my bowels swiftly, as though it were a boulder menacing a young Indiana Jones. Strangely, a thought had occured to me in tandem: I probably don't need to shower this morning; I feel clean and smell fine; my underwear are clean, too. It was at this moment that the fates intervened, squeezing the juicy hubris from my asshole like a ripe orange. Suddenly the wet spreading sensation of damp heat pressed itself against my cheeks and onto my boxers. Then the slight pop of a bubble bursting, and a splattering on the floor beneath me. Had someone thrown a water balloon? A thin mudslide meandered down my leg as shock swirled around me. OH SHIT! Yes, oh shit indeed.

All of my youth and vigor, my vitality, lay smoldering on the floor like runny brown marmalade. I realized the worst part isn't the shitting - that's easy. And it isn't shitting on yourself, either - that comes off in the shower. The worst part is wiping up the physical manifesitation of shame. It is a rare and mystifying moment where an emotion is transformed and given physical form, powerful stinking corporeality. It must be confronted and dealt with, disposed of; a disgusting used up coffee filter to be flushed down the toilet.

The best part of waking up.

Imagine

Why does death horrify us? I just drove by a dead deer on the side of the road. It was hit by a car, but the car must have just clipped it, because the body was intact, just a bit twisted. Its head was upturned, black eyes staring up at sunny blue skies, its body limp with indifference. The sight of the creature stirred something inside me that was strong and visceral; a mix of terror, revulsion, pity, sadness. The weightless, falling feeling of a rollercoaster hit me in the heart and rolled down through the veins in my arms, falling out from my fingers. The look on its face - like it might be sleeping - was marred by the cold stoicism of death, that irreversable rigid lissomeness hanging around it like spider's silk. The juxtaposition of an idyllic day and a dead deer had a hideous nightmarish quality to it.

Why, I asked myself. Not why did it die - that much I could tell. But why did the scene startle me as it did? Had I not seen dead animals before? Birds, cats, opossums, racoons, other deer. I think we all shrink from death, to varying degrees, but when death inhabits that which doesn't appear dead, it puts emphasis on the thin, frail pedestal life stands on. It is what we see in the mirror at our most desolate, lonely and forsaken; in our most fragile moments. There is a biological component, also. To see a dead thing signifies that which killed it may, at present, remain. It smells of lurking danger. It forces examination; the realization that you are at this moment alive, but soon, may not be. There is a cold communion we share with dead eyes, an accursed, unassailable understanding.

If eyes truly are a window to the soul, passageways connecting one set to another, then to behold it in another is to feel it in yourself.

A witty friend employed his brevity to bestow an answer - death horrifies us because we can imagine. Yeah, that seems true. Because we can imagine what, though?

A painful death, or a life without pain?

Bask

From earlier:
-------

I don't care to write today. The sun is shining; it feels warm against my face.

Small pieces of pollen dance in the air like little golden gnats.

The cat in me wants to run and pounce and paw at them.

To swing on the breeze in between two trees.

Can You Hear It?

Being able to listen has made me keen. I know this. Listening closely, as a child, to the lyrics of famous songwriters taught me about pain; they painted subtle shades of nostalgia before I was old enough to even know the thing; the necessity of love and loss; the importance of hope. Wild Horses, by The Rolling Stones, is one such song that comes to mind; Cat Stevens' Wild World; Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. I loved them all. Music is important to me for this reason, and others, also. Each time someone speaks, they sing a song of sorts, if you will listen. Glimpses into quiet desperation, loud trumpeted struggles, the modest strum of contentment. I enjoy listening to people talk. My silence becomes the microphone into which they sing. To listen is to understand someone, to frame yourself as they do. Reading is a form of this; seeing the world through someone else's eyes only to realize it's not very different than your own.

Recently I had a homeless man grab at me with both arms, pulling my forearm toward him while he clutched me, rubbing my closed hand against his grizzled chin and face. I look at him, where he sits, uncomfortably on the ground, and I lower myself down, crouched, so that I might meet his gaze. He smells of stale liquor and his eyes look like dirty car windows that had been rained on. Rambled words fall, slurred and staggering from his lips, about his daughters, his alcoholism, and then something in a language that I do not understand. The man tells me his name: Dwight. I tell him mine and I wait. Dwight repeats the phrase and I tell him I don't know what it means. He grows more solmen and more determined and assures me that I do know it. He pats his hand against my arm twice, quickly, like a magacian performing a trick, and motions upward toward the sky. Listen, he says, it's this. The quiet pervades the night, broken only by the gentle passage of a breeze. Stars shine in the sky overhead, in between buildings and parting clouds, and he smiles encouragingly, as though to let me know I'm closer to hearing it than I was before. In the distance there is the passing of cars, rolling waves of rubber against a faraway asphalt shore. Then, the faint static frequency of dead silence, like the sound an old cathode ray television would make when you turned it on, before any audio or video appeared. His eyes alight. There! There; can you hear it? Voices of women engaged in pleasant conversation twinkle like bells when they turn the corner, walking towards us as they leave a neighborhood bar. Their exchange becomes muted as they near, in that way that people cease speaking when they pass strangers in the night, and Dwight and I stop speaking too. I wonder if people do this out of secrecy, or fear, or both.

For what is secrecy if not the fear of being found out?

More Ovaltine Please

I'd written something on my way home, about a story I read earlier this morning, by Carlos Fuentes, called The Doll Queen, but I don't care to post it now. The always sudden swing from ecstasy to agony has humbled me, once again. When I arrived home, happy to see the sun still shining, the doorway to my bathroom proved itself troublesome as I tried to exit. Somehow, though it remained still, the doorframe positioned itself for impact with my unsuspecting hand as I pivoted from the sink to walk towards my room. Pain shot through my finger, then my knuckle, and finally into my wrist - the precise spot where I had broken my hand previously - as it collided with the wall. Immediately I thought I must have re-broken it, given its weakened state after the initial break. My mind swelled with worry as the tissue around my knuckle swelled too, and I clutched my hand hoping I could still move it. The wall stood staring, its facade seemed to smirk at my carelessness and lack of grace. What does it understand about broken appendages or fractured phalanges? It knows nothing about pain. A wall is simply erected and eventually demolished - either by man or time. Its purpose is to protect and divide, to reinforce and buffer. I guess it did try to divide - my hand from my bone - and I guess it did try to protect - me, from safety.

But don't fret dear readers, I'm okay. My fingers are fine. My pinky is just a bit bloated, like a sad, short, paltry erection, swollen with just enough blood to keep it fat but not hard.

My hip is fucked up, too. But not from the incident in the bathroom. The actual cause of the injury is unclear. Clouded by rampant alcohol consumption and confused by lewd conduct, the inciting action has been kidnapped from my memory. If I had to guess, stairs might be the culprit. Envision me sliding down a flight of steps, hitting my hip off of each one as I, clumsy, piteous and comical, perfectly mime the word: schadenfreude. Those damn Germans, ruthless. I should've known it was ze Germans! The ghost of Hitler was responsible for both of these misfortunes, I know it. His little sideways pussy-hair mustache; muffstache. What a piece of shit:

I'd discovered, perhaps too late, that it was he who was terrorizing me. It was a realization that was both absurd and inconceivable, but not entirely unbelievable. The evening light outside of my window had retreated over the hill, two floor-standing speakers played the tinny warbling vocals of a famous female jazz singer, while I lay in bed writing. All the lights in my apartment were out, save for the three hanging tiki-lights beside the bed. From the next room, somewhere in the darkness of the kitchen, I heard a faint rattling. Cautiously now, I turn down the volume on the stereo, until the singer whispers. The room is quiet, nothing stirs. After a few moments, when I'm about to resume the volume, there is the sound of footsteps, of someone wearing boots, against my kitchen floor. They are swift, deliberate paces, militant in their precision. My timid heart bolts, collides with my chest, and my cold blood crackles. I remember when I'd first developed a fear of ghosts, when I was twelve. I woke to find the figure of a man staring down at me from outside the window of my second-floor bedroom, his face obscured, covered in shadows cast by the orange glow of a streetlight behind him. I tried to scream out, but my voice only weakly displaced the air, like a tire deflating. Too panicked to actually leap from my bed and escape the thing's gaze, I forced shut my eyes and tried to will it away, hoping that once I opened them the apparition would be gone. This time, I wouldn't be so lucky.

The memory recedes and the phantom from my kitchen crashes into the room like a wave, holding a glass of chocolate milk angrily, brandishing a narrow darkly-colored milk-mustache. Hitler, no doubt. Why is he here? His presence is peculiar and nonsensical, and in spite of his dictatorial demeanor, and his tip-toe tyranny in my kitchen, he seems sullen. His Hitler-mustache seems to frown. He peers disgustedly from my doorway.

"Nesquik," he asks reproachfully. "What the fuck!? More Ovaltine, please!"

 I cannot muster a response and I just stare. Did they even have Ovaltine during World War II, I ask myself.

"You do NOT LEARN," he shouts, gesticulating fiercely, spilling milk all over the floor, onto my expensive rug.

"C'mon; watch out for the fucking rug, bro," I tell him.

He begins stomping madly all over the rug, with impunity, kicking it and dragging his heels across its delicate Persian stitching. He shoots me a look of incredulity, as if to say: I said please. I remain silent, awaiting a reaction from him. Instead, he continues to glare. I look at my rug. It is covered with Ovaltine stains, its fibers badly uprooted.

Does renter's insurance even cover something like this?

Possessed Soles

The Sunday morning fog had cleared, giving rise to rays of warm shunshine that kissed the heads of people in elaborate costumes, shining down on them like little personalized spotlights as they paraded through the streets. The gutters and sidewalks were littered with discarded cans of beer and red party cups. Girls wearing almost nothing flaunted their youthful bodies with felicity, flirtatiously. The air was festive and excited, exhilirated by the city-wide masquarade. The only thing moderating the merriment was a fast approaching Monday morning, pitched straight from the mound, racing toward the plate. We knocked it out of the park.

Once night fell there was dancing. And rule breaking. Smoking indoors, up in the balcony, beneath the no-smoking sign; reefer. More dancing, marveling, a manic clapping and stomping and then capsizing, a riproaring finale that set fire to the dance floor. It was hypnotic and wild, a standing stampede entranced, swinging and swaying rapturously, heels and boots thudding against the ground madly, trampeling over time.

Sore feet, aching muscles and a tired mind are all that remain - the sole survivors of the weekend.

Altruicide

I just read Q's post about global warming. It's funny, I had spoken to a friend from New York last night, about global warming, and we arrived at a similar conclusion: if you want to stop climate change, kill yourself. The argument is unassailable; unless the person destined to solve the problem were to kill his/herself. What better way to reduce your carbon footprint than to turn yourself into fertilizer: give back to the earth!

It's a provocative idea, to consider how climate change could affect societal feelings surrounding suicide. Especially when it comes to the old and dying, the sick and incurable. There is a foreseeable loss of humanity involved, given even Neanderthals cared for their sick. But what if it isn't less human? What if it's more; closer to that ever elusive truly altruistic deed. Everyone becomes a martyr for the human race, sacrificing themselves to preserve it. It's a sort of Humanistic Enlightened Romanticism, the marriage of science, nature, and society.

Thoughts around suicide will have to change in the future, to the point of complete reversal. No longer will it be seen as selfish, damaging and misguided - it will be selfless, considerate and judicious. It will have to be. Each breath one person takes will be one less for another. Life expectancy will be cut by half, setting the new end-of-life-expectancy at around 40 years, in an effort to conserve resources and reduce the collective strain on our species. Death will be more mandatory than ever before. Perception around death will have changed a bit though. I don't think it will be viewed as bad or insuperable as it is now, because each person's passing makes it possible for us to survive longer, collectively. Life itself will become a scarce resource, one that must be guarded and fiercely protected. A long life will be akin to a long shower: wasteful and greedy. The total human population will have to shrink down to become tenable. The earth will need time to rebound. Like a coal-colored plague, man-made climate change will slash at populations rapaciously, plundering us as we have it.

Only the good die young.
 

Flushed

Worked all day. Shit all day, too. I must have taken 15 shits today - and the day still isn't over. Something strange happens to your soul when you work 12 hours on a Saturday. It's the same thing that happens to your ass when you take 15 shits. It starts to feel red and raw, tender and hot - like the area below your nose that gets chapped to hell when you have a cold and keep blowing it. Today, I blew my asshole.

I wanted to rub vaseline on it - to moisturize it - but my brother told me that would be gay. Is it true? What has the world come to that a man can no longer rub a liberal finger-full of vaseline around his irritated anus to soothe the pain? Freedom isn't free. I wonder if it's gay to jerk off. I mean, only a faggot would like the feel of a firm man-hand around his cock, right?

It was the Profuser's birthday today. I feel like I've started too many sentences with it this post. Nope, I checked - it's my imagination. Anyway, it wasn't his actual birthday, but it was the day he'd set aside to celebrate. I feel bad because I didn't even get to see him. I wanted to administer birthday punches to his arm; the one in the sling. He'd have been hopped up on so much Oxy, he wouldn't have even felt it. But still, I would've liked to have been there with him. I don't get to see him often enough, now that he serves a different corporate master. Oh well, foiled again by the man(s).

I'm not even sure how old he is now. Forty? He still has more hair than me. The other day I'd asked him at what age do men start to shrink, when our bones get all compact and we hunch down, hobbled and humbled by time. He told me that he wasn't sure, but that his dick has been shrinking for years now. I believe it. Where is this raunchiness coming from today? Usually I'm a model of decency on this blog, upholding decorum and eschewing impropriety as best I can. Today must be an anomaly.

What else? Is there anything else? Nope. I'm beat. I think I flushed my intrepid energy down the toilet with the lining of my shit-stained sphincter. We're all little turds in time, flushed down the bowl, spiraling clockwise, floating in the corkscrew current, until with a loud belch, we're claimed by the swirling.

Co-Party

I went out with some friends after work. We had fun. Perhaps too much. We rocked out with our cocks out. It was the kind of night that unfolded naturally. The kind that you don't want to end. It had a limitless quality to it - like we all might wake up naked on the shore of some South American beach town and ask ourselves how we'd gotten there. It started out innocently enough, but before I knew it I was 5 drinks deep, ordering shots of fernet. And I liked it. That's how I know I was drunk - when fernet tastes good.

We played Jenga. We talked about Burning Man. We made dirty jokes and one-handed gestures. We talked trash, endearingly so, and enjoyed each other's company. It was swell. I just wish I hadn't agreed to working tomorrow. That way we could've all hung out until the sun came up. I'm glad I did it, glad we were able to share a moment - united in our dedication to have a good time. It inspires camaraderie and trust, understanding and allegiance. I'll have to make an effort to do it more often.

Next time we'll play strip poker. We'll suckle each other like little lambs. I can't wait. I promised a man that I'd bring him some indica-strain marijuana, to allay his anxiety.

Did you know people who work a lot have anxiety?

I Found a Reason

What keeps us going? It's a simple question, really - at least ostensibly. What is it that keeps us from leaping from a 10-story building toward the ever unflappable ground? Why do we endure unrelenting hardships, strife, sharp pains and the incessant aches that medicine can't palliate? I'm not sure. I guess you have to find a reason. We even need a reason to end it all, too; though in those cases a lack of a reason is reason enough too. We yearn for reasons and explanations. We hunt them; all pastel-painted and hiding. Sometimes, we find reasons when there aren't any. We're good at making them up when we need them; like those little portable black holes in old Looney Toons cartoons that could be placed anywhere.

A reason though, held too closely, steeped in too much conviction, could be hazardous. It can be a hole that half your leg is swallowed in. Or a pair of dark shades placed over your eyes, so black you can't see through. Never hold something so tightly that it hurts your hand to open it up again.

Holding on too loosely though, allows the thing to too easily slip away. It's funny - if you didn't hold on at all, you have neither problem. But what fun is that?

I don't know. Maybe having a reason is unreasonable. It's ever so slightly too forward thinking, enough to afford us a kind of myopic prescience, a retarded clairvoyance that keeps us always removed from the present. It's as though we only perceive the present through its juxtaposition to the future.

Why do we need it though, a reason? Why is it so important to know why? I realize the oddness of asking that question; to ask why we ask why is to affirm the fact. The snake eating its tail. We're trapped. It's all a circle. Wedding rings. Pizza and pie. The wheel. Areolas...well, sort of.

I remember reading an article somewhere that cited the top 5 most evil figures in literature. At the top of the list - at number one - was Iago, from Shakespeare's Othello. The reason (see what I did there) Iago is considered the most villainous of all villains, is because his villainy is incomprehensible. He is evil simply because he can be: showcasing a "motiveless malignity." It's telling that we find this kind of evil so despicable. It is the personification of death and danger and chaos - remorseless, indiscriminate, capricious.

"I do believe, if you don't like things you leave
 For some place you've never gone before"

- Velvet Underground

Run Run Run Run Run Take a Drag or Two

In life, three things are true; first, that all of us will die; until we do, we will spend our days distracting ourselves from the first truth; there is no such thing as a truly altruistic deed.

The first truth needs no explanation. The second truth though, is often challenged, but almost always ends in a concession. The most compelling argument I've heard so far is that some things we do are typified by a dwelling on death. While this argument is provocative, it does not adequately negate my postulate. If anything, it might necessitate a rewording of the second truth. Perhaps something like "all of life's actions are inspired by and an escape from death." But even then, it is simpler to say that we spend our time distracting ourselves from our mortality. Let's consider the argument though: that some acts aren't a form of escapism, but rather, investigations into death. If we assume this to be true, we might cite something such as religion as exhibiting a preoccupation with that eternal slumber, or humanity's obsession with risky behaviors that flirt with death; sky-diving; rock-climbing; speeding; drug abuse; autoerotic asphyxiation. Still though, I think a more careful examination reveals that these are not examples of chasing our demise.

In the case of thrill seeking, the seeker seeks an exhilaration - a heightened sense of awareness, the affirmation of life - not death. It is the illusion of freedom from death's embrace; a momentary feeling of invulnerability; a weak attempt at exercising power over that which we do not control. For someone to truly seek fatality, all they would need to do would be to lie inside a wooden box in a darkened, soundless room. Death is not exciting, it is mundane and lifeless, still. Just look at a corpse.

The case of religion is a more interesting one. Here, the fascination with expiration causes a shift in focus and the emergence of the concept of afterlife. There is an emphasis on life and living as a means to ensure safe passage at the time of your death. Death becomes the fulcrum point, the moment at which judgement is passed; the moment you stand in line for entry to the club and hope you're dressed well enough, or that the girl you're with is pretty enough to get you inside. The point being, that for religion, death is not the end. One of the tenants of religion is founded on escapism - the idea that through faith and good conduct you can survive expiry, that you can get into that elite club and fucking dance!

So in both cases - religion and dangerous behaviors - it is not the pursuit of death that motivates us, it is the want of power over it. We wish to defeat it, to enslave it, to incapacitate it and run from it so it cannot touch us. On a purely instinctual level we recoil from it, by definition: to survive is to thwart it. It is on a cognitive level that we construct abstractions to absolve ourselves of it. We create, we do, we choose to be. Creation and being are the anthesis of death - its literal and symbolic opposite. We disobey death in all we do. We run from it and busy ourselves with tasks to help us forget our dying; driving a bit slower down that dead end street, looking at the pretty houses and the yellow sunset painting everything in a fast fading gold that cannot stay.

Even writing this is a form of distraction. The belief that maybe I'll realize something about our situation that I hadn't before; the idea that writing something down and making it digital will lend me a kind of immortality; the belief that interrogating death might make it less scary - the shining of a light on the monster in the closet.

I'll tell you what isn't, though. It's not an altruistic deed.

There is no such thing.

Even something as seemingly selfless and kind as adopting a child, isn't. The person does it because it makes them feel good. They're doing something they feel is valuable and meaningful. It makes them feel they've saved something innocent and precious and pure. And this is true - they have. I would never denounce a beneficent deed, or suggest something as beautiful as adoption is anything less. I wish there were more people with enough empathy and love for others to forego replicating their own DNA for another person. I encourage people to be benevolent and help people in need, to be kind, to love and bring comfort and happiness to the ones the world has forgotten; give that homeless man a dollar, give him $5, volunteer, show someone something, explain it to them, share. All of these are necessary - imperative - for human growth and understanding, for the eradication of fear and ignorance, the preservation of compassion. However lofty, I do not confuse this with altruism. It isn't.

We're all selfish, acting out of self-interest and self-preservation, and at our best, we're able to produce an outcome that can be seen as symbiotic.

But, in spite of this, be caring. Do it selfishly; for the collective good of humanity; for posterity.

Buenos Días

It was in the early morning, just before the sunrise. He was standing out on the shore because he couldn't sleep. The waves rolled incessantly inward, emerging faithfully from the wall of infinite blackness that blanketed the horizon. It was her, in his dreams again, for the third night since they'd arrived in this beach town.

When they bought their bikes, cheap 250cc Hondas that were older than he was, Jim had jokingly said that you never forget your first bike, or your first love; he was right. All of their travels had brought them here; it was heaven. Aptly named, too: Cielo. Now, standing in the quiet predawn, it seemed the crashing waves whispered wet secrets to him - the dew of truth hung from his ears like diamonds. Was this just an attempt to forget? To get away? The people, the places, the potions and passions - all of it - was it just a grand escape? He tried to confront himself, using the sea as a mirror, but all he could see was rolling emptiness.

Waking gulls exercised their throats and cried out against the silence with their long, lonely caws. A thin sliver of red appeared over the water, like a squinting eye on fire, and then softened into a pink disc. The colors ran streaming across the sky, painting it pink and orange and light blue. Waves became paler and then translucent, less and less opaque. On the sand behind him, an old man pushed a cart full of ice, wheeling it across the beach to setup for the day. Buenos días, said the man warmly. Sí, buenos días señor, he replied.

Somehow the day seemed more bearable now that the sun was rising. The sun is always rising, he thought, even when it seems to be setting. It is easy to forget this when the dark hides the horizon, wrapping itself around it until there is nothing but blindfolded desperation.

He was hungry, now.

He'd go wake her up, and Jim, too. Tell her he had to go, that they'd be back. When, he wasn't sure, but he'd give her his bracelet as collateral. Then, they'd ride off toward the next town, toward the next beach and bar and pretty girl, chasing leisure, hunting happiness.

White Light

Colossal Coronal Mass Ejection

No time to write. Another one of those days, taken by the man.

I've been spoiled by the four day weekend that I stole (from the man). The weather must've been beautiful in the city today. I can tell by the warmth still lingering in the air, like a fart. Sun farts. Really, that's all nice days are - solar flares, eruptions from deep within the bowels of our star.

That big old bulb in the sky, just letting one rip, right into all of our smiling faces. To think, we lay out in the beach and bask in it; fouled photons.

Imagine farting so hot that blinding white light shot out of your asshole? I think that's what Lou Reed was writing about on White Light/White Heat.

White light, White light goin' messin' up my mind
White light, and don't you know its gonna make me go blind
White heat, aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Ooo have mercy white light have it goodness knows

White light, White light goin' messin' up my brain
White light, Aww white light its gonna drive me insane
White heat, Aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I said now goodness knows, do it

Hmm hmm, White light
Aww I surely do love to watch that stuff tip itself in
Hmm hmm, White light
Watch that side, watch that side don't you know it gonna be dead in the drive
Hmm hmm, White heat
Hey foxy mama watchin' her walk down the street
Hmm hmm, White light
Come up side your head gonna make a deadend on your street

White light, White light moved in me through my brain
White light, White light goin' makin' you go insane
White heat, Aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I said now goodness knows

White light, Aww white light it lighten up my eyes
White light, don't you know it fills me up with suprise
White light, Aww white heat tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I tell you now goodness knows, now work it

Hmm hmm, White light
Aww she surely do moves me
Hmm hmm, White light
Watch that speed freak, watch that speed freak everybody gonna go and make it every week
Hmm hmm, White heat
Aww sputter mutter everybody gonna go kill their mother
Hmm hmm, White light
Here she comes, here she comes, everybody get 'n gone make me run to her

- The Velvet Underground

Inertia

Fuck. I messed up my rent check this month, twice. The first time was sheer negligence - I'd just forgotten to write it. The second time though - when I actually wrote and hand-delivered it - I gave them a check from an old checkbook, from an account that's been closed. Fantastic.

I'll have to call my landlord in the morning and explain that I am merely an incompetent dullard, not an unreliable tenant. Fun times. What an enjoyable way to end a Sunday night. I should've just stayed where I was an hour ago; the cool breeze drifting in softly from the open window, Velvet Underground humming from the speakers, the weight of her sleeping head resting against mine while little zzz's whispered from her lips; the moment was inertial and slow, hanging in time like a morphine lullaby.

Spa Palate

Last night I watched the first 1 2/3 of the original 3 Naked Gun movies. I'd forgotten how heavily films like Austin Powers had borrowed various skits and gags, recurring jokes and superabundant slapstick. The movies were entertaining; they were irreverent and self deprecating; mythically masturbatory.

I just brushed my teeth. Now my mouth tastes like blood and envelope glue. I think I should drink some orange juice - that would taste just grand.  I want to open a restaurant where, between each course - and before every drink - a waiter or sommelier brings to the table a toothbrush, and provides a total palate-cleansing experience; tucking a white satin bib around a patron's neck and delivering a nice foamy, well lathered tooth-brushing to refresh tired tastebuds. It would be like getting a relaxing warm shave at a barbershop. We'd use only the finest artisanal toothpaste, of course; sourced from all natural, local ingredients, with a careful concern on sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint.

The sun is curious this morning, peeking through my window, coming in through the little slits in my blinds, drawing lines on my wall.

I'm starving. I'm out of milk. Last time this happened I tried eating cereal with greek yogurt and kefir in it, to try and substitute one dairy product for another. Let me tell you, friends, never, ever try that. It tasted like a nice bowl full of clumpy, rancid milk with flakes of crust and raisins on top. I'll serve that at my restaurant, actually. On the menu it will be described as:

Milkless Sour Cereal
A delicate combination of hand-cut oats and brown raisins, sprinklings of pistachios and pumpkin seeds, puffed rice and diced organic bananas, dressed in a creamy all-natural kefir sauce with dollops of Greek yogurt

Mmmmm. I'm getting hungry just thinking about that tart treat. Just think of how good it would taste after a nice invigorating palate refresher!

What would I call my fine dinery, though?

Spa Palate - The Mouth Palace

Floating

She floated on the water, unfolding, stretching out and opening like a lotus flower. The stars were bright and shining; little irregular polka dots, the size of this period .

The water on her skin felt good; brisk but soft. It plashed and undulated, as though lapped up by a great invisible dog.

Maybe it was Orion's.

It's strange, she thought, that most people are made up of water, but when placed in it, some of them sink and cannot swim.

Water can sustain life or drown it.

Like fire. Or love.

Several small, sailboat leaves had fallen from the trees and landed in the water, floating on top lazily, stranded out at sea.

Spaghetti in a Chocolate Sauce

They walked past arm in arm, taking cover under a pink polka dotted umbrella. They wore galoshes and yellow raincoats, stomping playfully through puddles whenever they'd see one that was big enough. The smaller one carried a pink Barbie lunchbox containing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a few Oreos and a Yoo-hoo. The other one carried only her backpack and a smile.

The wind whipped and thrashed, kicking rain around, spitting at their faces. Haley winced and scrunched her nose. Her hair swirled around like a mess of blonde snakes. A car horn blared out through the beaded curtains of hanging rain. A wet newspaper flapped in the gutter. The hurried footsteps of careful feet clattered across the pavement, equine and aqueous.

"You hear that, Haley? It sounds like horsies," Dakota said, looking up at her sister with wide, sky-blue eyes.

"Yeah, I hear it. But to me, they sound like old wooden blocks, like the kind Mrs. Marrety has in class," Haley said.

"It doesn't sound like blocks," Dakota said giggling, "it sounds like wooden horsies!"

"You're right, like the Trojan Horse. Did you learn about the Trojan Horse yet?"

The light turned green. They crossed the street and kept walking.

"Uh-huh," said the little one, "with Hercules!"

"Hercules wasn't in the horse," Haley said snidely, with a pedantic emphasis on wasn't.

"Was too," Dakota said excitedly, "he was in the horse, and Abraham Lincoln was in the horse, and Batman was in the horse, and Grandpa was is the horse."

The road ahead of them was mostly dirt which had turned to mud, with only a few thin pieces of sidewalk spread across it, like concrete slices of Kraft cheese. Dakota wrenched her hand free from her sister and went off running. She jumped from square to square like a frog and managed not to fall into the mud.

"Dakota, get back here," Haley yelled charging after her, "we're not going that way; it's too messy!"

The little one just kept on running, giggling madly with mischief in her eyes and dimples on her cheeks, drunk on adventure. "It's a shortcut," she yelled out, her feet and arms dancing spastically, "try'n catch me scardeycat; betcha can't!"

"Eeeewwww! Haley, look," Dakota said, as she stopped and pointed, "worms."

The worms looked strange, like swollen spaghetti, in a chocolate sauce.

Acari Assassin

I suspect I may have been bitten by a tick. Initially I thought it had happened on Sunday, but after researching Lyme Disease I realized I had a rash resembling Erythema Migrans on the right side of my hip last week. At the time, I thought it was a pimple made mad by the constant irritation of my jeans rubbing up against my hip, but it grew to be the size of a small marble and the area around it became oval and strangely red, like a bullseye. I thought it might be a spider-bite and figured I would wait a day or two and see if it worsened. By the time this weekend arrived, it had all but vanished.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I began to feel the heaviness of sudden onset nausea, headache, and fatigue. I thought it strange that the base of my spine ached. I looked up the symptoms of Lyme Disease and found they match the ones ailing me - though they so closely mimic the common cold and other flu-like symptoms that it's hard to tell. The issue is further confounded by the methods of detection; diagnosis seems unreliable, giving false positives and missing the presence of the disease entirely. My prognosis isn't good, friends.

I go hiking a lot - nearly every weekend. It's unlikely I was bitten on the hip by a tick during a hike; that sentence sounds musical. It's more likely that I picked up a stowaway on a trail, a tick with its fat little thumb raised, hungry and patient, waiting calmly on my shoulder until I got home, until I took of my clothes, where it would launch its fangs into the taut skin of my bony hip.

I didn't even feel it.

There's a reason we fear the things hidden in our closets and beneath our beds - the things we do not see are the things most liable to destroy us.

Let the Good Times Roll

The weekend was grand; the kind of weekend that makes its ending almost unbearable. We left early Saturday morning and headed to Sonoma. We ate blunch (more lunch than breakfast) and then ventured deeper into Sonoma County, onward and upward toward the Russian River. The weather was impeccable and the drive provided stunning vistas, all in bloom with rustic splendor. For us, the road became a river, and we sailed swiftly on it in our metal landshark, preying on beauty, devouring it with our eyes.

We arrived at the hotel and were greeted by Teddy, the innkeeper, who was wrangling a pack of fun-loving dogs. He was warm and evinced a genuine hospitality that was cool and avuncular. The grounds were lovely, equipped with a saline pool and hot tub, a garden, chickens, community bicycles, a hiking trail and a national forest within throwing distance. Our room was a refinished cabin from the 1950's, refurnished and modernized, with a fireplace and private back porch.

We explored our room and marked our territory, by pissing on it liberally. As we swallowed some powdered wonder on the back porch, under an orange canopy colored like a monk's robe, we heard the hungry squeaks of baby birds while their mother fed them in the nest above us. The sky was an auspicious blue and hawks hovered overhead like fighter jets, ready to annihilate any threat of danger or discomfort. We frolicked through the courtyard and hiked up a trail on the side of a mountain that led to nowhere. We returned to our room and stretched out on the bed languorously, like sleepy cats, until the rising moon pulled at our night-time curiosities. Wearing robes, we ventured out into the hot tub, where two women were fanning the flames of a fire.

We slipped into the pool like a pair of suicidal lobsters, the water bubbling and boiling around us, gurgling and lapping at us with its calming currents. Soon I felt more like a rabbit than a crustacean as I felt my muscles loosen on my bones, and the four of us were transformed into a human stew, simmering beneath the starlight. To our right, a palm tree leaned toward us, hanging on high, wafting up our amorous aroma and fanning out our pheromones. To our left, the crescent moon cut the sky like a sickle, dispelling the thin evening fog that glowed around it like gossamer.

We all began chatting, the four of us waxing philosophic, as a another woman, from Portland, joined us in the tub. The water had a mysterious way of linking our energies, tying them together in pretty red bows and smoothing them over, accelerating our conversation, percolating it. Soon, the powdered wonder I'd washed down with some Champagne was opening my chakras, busting them off their hinges. I was making poetic remarks, stressing the importance of understanding, of beauty. I won over the hearts of my mermaid mistresses and we floated in our cauldron contentedly. Then I ran to the room and grabbed a bottle of champagne, raspberries, and chocolates; I was savagely unbridled. The flames from the fire burning beside us had begun to dwindle and it billowed a light smoke that stretched across the leaves of tress like spiderwebs, and cloaked the stars in a milky kind of way.

At the witching hour, JK summoned her inner cat and climbed onto a roof, screaming: "I am a golden god!" I joined her up there, above the fog, and we lay looking at the twinkling sky, the warm water from our wet skin turning to steam. Soon we left our waterlogged wayfarers and headed back to our bungalow.

We fell asleep mumbling the words to songs in hushed, sleepy whispers, hallucinating, having half-imagined conversations with projections on the back of our eyelids. *


*Before we fell asleep she broke the screen door to the back porch - ripped it clean off the frame. She knocked over objects that groaned and rolled around loudly when they hit the floor. We got caught naked on the balcony. We woke up a pregnant woman in an adjacent room. Pot was smoked, in a no smoking zone. We let the good times roll.

A Denial

Friday. Sweet merciful Friday. The past few days have been glorious and sun-filled. The weekend is predicted to bring the same kind of warmth and radiance.

There's a show tonight that I'll check out, to kickstart the weekend. It'll serve as a fun-filled defibrillator that'll resuscitate my failing sense of autonomy.

To spite my fate, I'll steal away with JK and find the mischief and ripened possibility hidden inside fermented grapes. We'll taste all the variations, letting them stain our tongues until they become a luscious red satin, then we'll wrap each other up in them.

I just remembered a dream I had last night. Well, not the dream so much, but the feeling it left upon waking: panic. There was an elevation in heartrate, a tightness in my chest - antifreeze running through my veins.

Perhaps panic is just excitation. They are indistinguishable, physiologically. It's funny how, through perception, the mind is able to polarize an identical physical phenomenon and split it into two opposite feelings - elated anticipation and ineluctable terror. The beautiful and the sublime.

I refuse to believe I was panicked. My mind must've misunderstood what my body was trying to say.

But then what of denial?

Grim

It was late September when he showed up in Red Canyon. No one knew who he was, just that he was bad, evil. That's not to say the town wasn't without bad men, but he was in a different league. No one knew his name. Everyone called him Grim, on account of the black hood he wore over his black hat and his long black duster. His beard was grizzled, his eyes were a piercing cerulean blue, and his skin was the color of sand, rough like it too; from riding across the 200 miles of desert to get to Red Canyon, they say. He was rumored to have come by horse; the only man ever. Everyone else came by the only way there was - by train. The night Grim arrived in town, Old Bill Murphy was down at Jacob's saloon having a drink, to ease the pain of his brother passing. The way he tells the story, you'd think Grim was the angel of death himself.

That particular night happened to be the 33rd anniversary of Red Canyon - which was founded back in 1802 - and Jacob's saloon was full of men in high spirits, drunk with celebration. Now, Red Canyon was a mining town, known for its hostile climate and even more hostile populace. The townsfolk were here because they had to be; thieves, liars, cheaters and killers with nowhere else to go. It was lawless. Even the sheriff, Wes Clancy, was rumored to have shot a man in cold blood because he spat tobacco on his newly shined boots. Clancy was the kind of man who you feared because of his misuse of power. You obeyed him because if you didn't, you might turn up missing, or your house might be robbed or burned down. He was someone you wanted with you (at an arms length), not against you. They say he came from the same town as Mad Maynard, a man renowned in the west for murdering six marshals and four rangers before they cornered him in Reno unarmed and in bed with three whores.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of mischief the boys were making down at Jacob's that night, Wes was said to have hauled off half the bar to jail, for disorderliness. It was the only time in the town's history that anyone was ever deemed disorderly. There were overturned tables and ceilings that looked like swiss cheese, broken chairs and a blood-stained doorway, the floors littered with broken glass. Jacob nearly closed down the saloon, and would have - if the money weren't flowing as it were. By this time it was just past three in the morning. The only thing left was the trouble you find at the bottom of the bottle; conscience had long since fallen asleep and scruples had been drowned in drink hours ago. Wes was busy at the jail, wrangling some of the town's finest criminals, shaking them down for whatever they had. The other criminals, the ones Wes couldn't - or wouldn't - wrangle, were still at Jacobs's, gambling and hollering, shooting off pistols.  This was when Grim showed up.

At the far table, the Bradley Boys - all five of them - sat and leered at the other patrons, with eyes that paced like a dog behind a fence. They all sat drinking and not saying a word.

"Looks like another one for me boys," Curt Weston yelled. "These sorry sons a bitches couldn't beat me if they shot out both my eyes," he continued. "How about I buy you boys a round to keep you from frowning; God forbid you laugh or smile or somethin," he said over his shoulder to the Bradley gang.

Curt's two opponents and the Bradley gang both glared hard. They were fed up with his insistent talking, and the others, with his winning. "Say, Curt," Clem said from across the table, "how you figure a man could win five hands in a row?"

Curt smiled and said, "a victory for each finger my friend."

"I ain't your friend, boy," Clem said coldly.

There was the sound of crunching glass, but no one noticed. Without the music playing, everyone in the saloon was hung on the words exchanged at the poker table, watching excitedly to see what would happen next. "Frankly, I'm sick of your mudsill face, and I think it's time you leave," Clem said, staring meanly while sliding his hand toward his hip.

"Is that so," Curt asked, taking a drink from his glass. He brought it from his mouth and examined it carefully, sucking his lips, savoring the taste. "Them sounds like fightin' words, Clem," he said, without looking up from the glass. Still spinning it in his hand he said, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say you was tryn'a call me a cheat."

Clem's fingers tapped cooly against the metal revolver on his hip, flirting with the idea of perforating Curt Weston. Curt was said to be one of the deadliest pistoleers in Red Canyon. He shot sharp; he could shoot off six rounds into a wall and leave only one exit hole. Clem was a prideful young man of eighteen and hadn't ever backed down from a challenge. When he was young, his father had ingrained a daring sense of fearlessness in him. The kind of fearlessness that made a man feared. His pa told him bravery was doing the thing everyone else is too scared to. And there was no one in Red Canyon who wasn't scared to showdown with Curt Weston. Hummingbird, they called him, on account of how fast he was. He wore a green and purple bandana around his pistol to reinforce the fact.

Clem's best friend, Johnny Hackwell, saw Clem's fingers inching toward the trigger. Fearing he might try to kick up a row with Curt, he said: "Come on now, both of you - we just having fun here, right? Curt how about you buy those drinks and Clem and I will shuffle the deck. We can all bend elbows and play a game of cards." But Clem didn't take his eyes off Curt Weston.

"You tryn'a have a staring contest with the Hummingbird, boy," Curt asked, casually sipping from his cup. "Because it looks to me like you got three fingers on that cannon there. Been a good two minutes now," Curt said smiling. "What you thinkin' bout doin'?"

"I don't need three," Clem said hotly, "just one." "I ain't scared of you," he added, speaking more to himself than to Curt Weston.

"Well, that was your first mistake," Curt said as he swallowed the last of his beer.

In a flash, he smashed the empty glass into Clem's face and it caught him in the nose with a loud crack. Clem was disoriented; his vision blurred and his eyes stung with tears, blood ran from his burst nose. He reached and tried to unholster his pistol but Curt had long beat him to it.

"Don't," Curt said, "I'm gonna give you a chance to apologize. I like your courage, stupid and misguided as it may be."

Johnny Hackwell interjected and said, "Naw, c'mon Clem, let's just get on outta here before someone does something they regret - no hard feelings." The man in the black hood and duster, the man that no one had seen come in, the one who sat at the bar behind the men at the table, turned around in his chair to watch.

"I wasn't talking to you Hackwell; you'd best bite your tongue, before I do," Curt threatened. "What's it gonna be," he asked Clem. "Two words, or two paces," he asked.

Clem turned his head and spat blood on the dirty wooden floor. "Go to hell, Weston," he said. Realizing Clem wasn't going to back down, Johnny Hackwell started to pull away from the table.

"Where you goin' Hackwell," Curt asked, not taking his eyes from Clem.

"I don't want no trouble Curt," Johnny said, "I been drinkin' and I had my fun. I tried to smooth this over but I don't want no part of it now, it's between the two of you," he finished. Without looking, Curt shot him in the face - between his eyes. Johnny tumbled backward over his chair, his spurs jingled like dropped coins as he collapsed into the floor.

"I told you to watch your tongue, Hackwell," Curt said, placing his aim back on Clem.

Two of the Bradley boys stood up. Abraham, the youngest of the bunch, addressed Curt: "That wasn't right; Johnny didn't mean you no harm. You might as well of shot him in the back."

"Ain't no honor among thieves. Sit yourself back down; this don't concern you," Curt said, keeping his aim on a stunned Clem Williams. Johnny Hackwell had been Clem's best friend since boyhood. The first time he had ever shot a gun was with Johnny, out by the creek on the south side of town, where they'd learned to shoot by shooting on crows. They swore to each other - it was a blood-pact - that if either of them was ever wrongfully killed, the other would avenge his life. Abraham Bradley happened to be sweet on a girl who was cousins with Johnny Hackwell, and had liked Johnny a great deal. If he could capitalize on Curt's drunken stupor and avenge Johnny, surely Susie would take his hand.

"No! There's dirty and there's dirty," Abraham said excitedly. "I knew Johnny; he didn't deserve to be dealt with like that," he said, drawing his pistol and holding it on Curt.

"Ok, fine," Curt said, "allow me to make amends. I'll give Clem the chance to avenge his friend's death."

"I was his friend too," Abraham said, "why shouldn't I be able to avenge him?"

"I have enough bullets for the both of ya," Curt said. He stood up and motioned for Clem to rise. The three of them stood with their guns trained. The hooded man at the bar lit a match and began to smoke a cigarette while he looked on. Old Bill Murphy, looking down from the balcony, says nobody in the whole place stirred. Isaiah, the eldest member of the Bradley gang, called out: "Curt, if you's fighting with Abraham, you's fighting with us all."

"Well, then; the more the merrier," Curt replied.

Curt knew Clem was the biggest threat in the room - and he happened to be the closest - so he took aim at him first, and blew off the fingers of his gun hand. A part of him didn't want to kill Clem. He wanted to ruin him. Curt believed there ain't nothing more tortured than a prideful man stripped of his pride. To take away a man's hand was a kind of castration, especially for a gunslinger: the ultimate disrespect. Curt rolled and took cover under the table as the bullets from the Bradley boys flew. He only had four bullets left, but there was five of them. He knew he couldn't stand his ground and try to take them all on at once. So he got crafty. While he was on the ground he unholstered Johnny Hackwell's pistol and tucked it behind his back.

"Shoot the bastard," Isaiah screamed as shots and gunsmoke clouded the saloon. Curt fired through the smoke and caught Buck Bradley in the throat, wounding him fatally. When the smoke cleared, Curt had moved himself to the adjacent table and fired at James Bradley, lodging a bullet deep into his lung.

There was a momentary ceasefire as Curt and the surviving Bradleys hid behind overturned tables. Everyone else in the room, except for the man at the bar, had receded to the corners of the saloon. Bartholomew Bradley clutched James in his arms, cradling him and rocking gravely back and forth. He was losing blood fast. The color fled from his face and left it pale like cotton. James' gasping pained breaths bubbled and popped from his chest. Tears fell from Bart's eyes as James looked up and asked, "I'm gonna be okay, right Bart? Tell me. I'm gonna be alright, right?" Then he stopped moving. Stopped breathing.

Bart and James had been the closest of the Bradley brothers, largely because they were the closest in age - nine months apart - but also because they were both there when their ma was killed by a runaway train. Evelyn Bradley had lost her hearing when Abraham fired a shotgun inside the house, at a bounty hunter by the name of Jack Scallion, who had broke into their home to claim a then $500 bounty on Isaiah's head. When he fired the gun the buckshot scattered and hit an oil lantern, igniting it and spraying liquid fire out onto the right side of his ma's head, all in her ear. The town's Doctor, Doctor Browne, fixed up the burns and kept her from getting an infection, but never quite understood why she'd lost hearing in both her ears. So that Sunday, when the train couldn't stop, she never heard the horns blaring. She'd been rushing toward Abraham, who'd just come back to town after being gone for a year in Reno, and when the locomotive hit her she was killed on the spot, right in front of Abraham. The other Bradleys had a disdain for Abraham because of this. They always had. They felt he was a curse on the family, and they weren't wrong. After all, he'd gotten them into this mess at Jacob's.

Bart had a bad temper, a notorious one. He'd once choked Father McCafferty for telling him to recite too many Our Father's. They had to recruit the congregation to help pry him off of him, after he'd pulled the poor priest from the confessional. At the sight of two of his brothers shot and killed, he lost his head. He leapt out from behind the table and started charging Curt Weston, shooting off rounds blind into the table as he went. Curt shot back over the table, hoping to catch him in the head but hit him in the belly instead. Bart was unphased, unstoppable and unconsolable, numb with rage. He had a pistol in one hand and a large knife in the other. He dove over the table Curt had taken up behind and landed the knife down into his shoulder before Curt was able to shoot him straight in the heart. He pulled the knife from his arm and checked the wound. It was deep.

"Let's rush him," Abraham screamed, "he's only got one bullet left; he can't kill the both of us!"

Isaiah followed as Abraham charged, shooting as they went. From all the firing, the Bradleys had cut a small hole in the table. Looking through the hole, Curt waited until they were a few feet away, holding the knife in his left hand, and with his gun in his right, he placed the barrel through the hole and shot Abraham in the foot. Abraham stumbled and fell, and Isaiah toppled over. As Isaiah was falling toward him, Curt came up from behind the table and impaled him on his brothers knife, eviscerating him. With his boot on Abraham's throat, he pulled the dead man's gun from behind his back and pressed it against the last Bradley's head.

"Only fools rush in, boy," he said wryly, and pulled the trigger. With a bang the fight was over. Clem still lay on the floor, clutching his mangled right hand, dried blood all crusted up beneath his nose. Curt's head was swirling from all the killing - it made him lust for more. A madness came over him, the same madness that came over him years ago, in the desert heat. He was outnumbered and alone, his party had been killed in a stagecoach robbery gone wrong. Without food and water for days, stumbling through the desert, seeing apparitions, a band of Indians came across him. The last thing he remembered, standing in the desert surrounded by Injuns, mad as a boar, was a vision of a frantic hummingbird darting round his head, wings fluttering. His adrenaline surged and he changed his mind about letting Clem live. Laughing slowly, he pointed his gun at the young man.

"Leave the kid alone," someone from behind Curt said. It was the man at the bar, smoking a cigarette.

Curt didn't turn around immediately. He hesitated, like he was hearing a voice he'd known in a past life, like he was coming out of a dream. "Mmmm. I've been waitin' for someone like you," Curt said, looking back over his shoulder.

"Shut up," the man at the bar said, taking a slow drag from his cigarette.

"What'd you say? You think you can come in here and talk like that," Curt asked, turning around with a deranged grin on his face. Blood dripped from his shoulder down his arm. It had soaked through his sleeve. "I'll make you my lucky number 7, boy."

The man at the bar took one more pull of his cigarette and tapped it out on the counter. Old Jacob poured himself a strong drink and drank it fast. Then did it again. His gulps were loud as rocks hitting a lake. The hooded man crossed his arms underneath his duster and said, "Not tonight, I'm afraid; tonight's not your night."

"It's not my night," Curt asked with shocked impatience, looking around the room for affirmation. "You come in here and run your mouth, boy, you don't know who you're dealing with; I got no known competition."

"I told you to shut up," said the man with harsh equanimity. Posing at the bar, he looked like a living breathing wanted-poster. "I seen what you did. You shot a kid in cold blood, blew off another one's hand and killed 5 drunks; got yourself stabbed doing it, too. Should I be impressed? No. The way I see it, you're awaitin' retribution - divine reckoning; a celestial intervention."

Curt licked his lips and smiled. He stomped his heel and threw up his arms and said, "you talk real funny, boy." He rested his hand on the butt of his pistol, the bandana hanging limply from his side. It was so quiet you could hear Curt's blood patter against the wood floor as it fell from his sleeve.

"You gonna draw," Curt hollered.

The hooded man sat statue-still. After a moment he said, "I don't draw; a draw is a tie - I win," and he jumped up out of his chair, leading Curt to draw on him. With a thwip, and a greased metallic click, Curt had fired ineffectually at the man slowly moving toward him.

"Forgot you were out of bullets? I thought you would," the man said. "I bet you wish you'd saved those two bullets you spent on the kid and his friend," he said, stepping closer, hands in his pockets. "The past has a way of catchin' up to us, don't it?"

Curt's eyes became wild and he took a step back to think. "You ain't the type to pass up a draw, stranger. I'l get a weapon and we'll do this like men," Curt said with a bit too much urgency.

The man in the hood stopped a few feet before him and waited. He saw Clem writhing on the floor behind Curt. "You want a weapon? Ask him for his," he said, motioning toward Clem. "I'll wait."

"Now, that ain't...he ain't..." Curt trailed off. The man interrupted and said, "go on, ask. What use is the gun to him, after what you did to his hand and all. Not like he'll shoot ya." Curt glanced back at Clem, and when he looked at the hooded man he saw the hollow eyes of a shotgun staring back at him.

"I don't need five lucky fingers, just one," he said, before he pulled the trigger and blew Curt's leg clean off. Curt was thrown onto the floor from the blast, his leg flopped over like a dead fish. When he looked up at the man's blue eyes, the shotgun was already tucked back inside his duster. "Looks like you're goin' all to pieces on me," he said, unraveling some rope. Curt cried out and thrashed on the floor as the man bound his hands.

"You son of a bitch," he hollered, "my leg, you took my god-damned leg!"

"Hey kid," the man said, looking at Clem, "your gun; you'll let him have it, right?" Clem looked at Curt dazedly. Disbelief and a sadistic smile spread across the young man's face.

"NO! No, don't let him; you can't let him," Curt pleaded, "this ain't right!" "Somebody do somethin' to stop these rapscallions! You can't kill me, you can't!"

"It's looking pretty grim," the man said, lighting up a cigarette.