We argued,
made love
and then
argued again,
before you said
that maybe
I should go
and play
with the traffic
for a while
and walked away,
as you called
the pizzeria
and when
the delivery man
finally arrived –
you opened
the box
to reveal a
ham and
pineapple pizza
and like ham
and pineapple pizza,
I knew then
that only a fool
would truly
think that we’d
work well
together.
Dr. Emanuel Kokoschka had long since been denounced as a crackpot and a quack but the controversy surrounding reports of his latest research was quite unlike anything I’d ever seen in all my years of scientific journalism. He welcomed me at the iron shutters of his latest clinic (in reality an industrial unit on the outskirts of Tipton) and ushered me into his office. We walked past lines of iron shelving that ran the length of the warehouse, cardboard boxes containing babies and toddlers of various ages, some of them crying, some babbling incoherently.
His office was bare apart from a plastic garden chair, an aluminum desk, a large throne-like chair of leather and polished gold, and a tatty Sunday Sport calendar from 1992, perhaps leftover from his “clinic’s” previous occupants. He bid me sit on the plastic chair as he eased himself into his throne.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “My work into the development of human consciousness has been most enlightening, raising questions about the most fundamental aspects of the nature of human awareness.”
He sat back in his throne, clearly relishing this opportunity to explain his work in detail. “For you see, awareness is simply the ability to attend selectively among a range of perceived stimuli and then combine and hold these attended items in a short-term memory store. By placing babies in sensory deprivation tanks directly from birth, I found that prodding them with pointy sticks elicited a reaction that clearly demonstrated an awareness that pointy sticks were bad and so something to be avoided.”
I stopped scribbling in my notebook, shocked.
“So awareness can therefore be found in solitary animals and is not an aspect of social intelligence. I had proven that non-conscious babies may be aware of their surroundings. However, awareness of inner body states is surely unique to conscious beasts.”
He sat forward and leaned on his desk. “So I attempted to determine how this awareness of the inner body state would be affected by manipulating the outer environment. One group I kept in their sensory deprivation tanks, another group were subjected to overwhelming external stimuli – constant flashing lights, Skrillex at 120 decibels and the like – while another had their subjective awareness distorted through round the clock administration of LSD. Four years later and the results are overwhelmingly conclusive. Idiots. Absolute idiots, the lot of them!”
He beamed at me, obviously proud of what he considered his ground-breaking research. “But then, there is the question of the nature of language in human consciousness. Freud argued that for an idea to become conscious it needs to be attached to language and language learning involves learning associations between objects and words. I tested this hypothesis by placing the little tykes in a controlled environment and then showing them objects before repeating random words. So I would show them a banana and say, “Dongle,” or give them a doll and say, “Binoculars,” for example.”
The door swung open and a young boy of around four years of age, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head and only an old bin liner around his loins, scampered in and rushed to Kokoschka. He looked up imploringly as he tugged at Kokoschka’s stained, white coat. “Kipper jam shot fizz tea!”
“Yes, yes. Be quiet now.” He paused. “They are annoying, aren’t they?” Kokoschka patted the child on the head. “And while they did indeed show a certain level of consciousness, I was faced with the issue of human language acquisition itself. In a social milieu a child wants to communicate social information and tries to talk because it is so useful in the social environment. It is this drive that elevated humans, who are indeed fully conscious, from apes, who demonstrate only awareness. So by placing these children together in a room, I observed how being with the other children affected their development of language.”
I sat in stunned silence but Kokoschka, now fully enthused in being able to describe his research to someone else continued. “And absolute gibberish it was; complete cacophony. But still, that brings me to the latest stage of my research, which is undoubtedly the most exciting.”
I was so stunned by his catalogue of atrocities that I could barely croak out a response.
“For you see, it is probable that consciousness is crucially dependent upon neural circuits located in dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex – the upper-outer lobes of the front of the dominant, language-containing, hemisphere – for this is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. So my current research involves opening up their little noggins and applying powerful electrical current to the various parts of their exposed brains.”
The frightened child continued to tug at his coat. “Fob win nostril courgette,” it whined before starting to wail.
“So…” I gasped. “What… what have you discovered?”
“Well, very strong findings! Very strong! Groundbreaking! They don’t like it. They don’t like it all. Do you, poppet?”
The child continued to cry, as rain started to pelt against the corrugated iron roof.
I awoke with my face in the dirt, aching beneath a pile of dead fish, tin cans and candy wrappers.
I struggled up into sitting position and wiped the grunge off my face. It was cold by the shore that night, and the fog covered everything in sight. I could just barely make out some dead hedges in the hazy darkness behind me, but I could only see about ten meters or so down the misty beach. The waves came in black, glistening like oil in the moonlight.
The moon was a shy one that night, only occasionally peeking out from behind the clouds. Illuminated by this meagre light, I espied a murder of crows feasting on what appeared to be a pile of dead fish near the water’s edge.
I had no recollection of how I had gotten there, where I had come from, or even who I was.
Standing up, I decided to check myself over for identification, finding nothing in the pockets of my ripped, soiled shorts. My only other article of clothing was a running shoe about two sizes too large, and, judging from the pain in my foot, there was evidently something else inside it.
Kicking off the shoe and shaking it out, I was surprised to see two gold coins fall out onto the ground before me. They appeared to be quite old and worn with no discernible markings.
Still covered in fish guts and assorted other beach debris, half naked and freezing with no recollection of anything, I attempted to assess my situation. My only assets being a pair of torn shorts, an ill-fitting shoe, and a couple of strange gold coins, I concluded that I should probably get on the move.
I was sore as hell as I made my way down the shore, stumbling off to god knew where.
Passing the crows from before, I made a grisly discovery – what they were feasting on was not dead fish at all, but rather the remains of something human, judging by its bones. I quickly lurched on by, relieved that at least it hadn’t been me.
It was then I caught a glimpse of something in the distance, a shrouded figure I thought, but at this point I couldn’t trust anything, least of all my senses. The one thing I was sure of was that I’d prefer not to meet the same fate as my unlucky friend I’d passed along the way.
Eventually I came upon the cloaked man. There he stood beside his boat, a single long oar laid across its gunnel. I couldn’t see his face beneath his dark hood.
As I approached, he stretched out a long, skeletal hand as if to receive something. I assumed he didn’t want my shoe or my shorts, and so I gave him the coins instead, watching as they melted into the night.
I don’t recall much after that.
The first time I see Lucius Lamont he is wearing a nylon stalking mask and a pair of greasy jeans. There is a snail-trail of fresh semen down his right leg. At best, he looks like Tailgunner centrefold material on a particularly bad month. At worst, he looks like the kind of guy who advertises his services at the back of the magazine, and ends up handcuffing you to a radiator and stealing your wallet. Hell, what do I know? I only buy it for the fucking articles…
My claw hammer craters his nylon-sheathed skull as he opens the door, and I bundle him into the dingy hallway, away from the prying eyes of the other sheltered accommodation shit-bags. The sagging floorboards feel as soft as shit beneath my boots. I kick him down the dank passage and he moans like a fat hooker, curling into a foetal ball on the exposed wood.
I don’t see the switchblade until it is wedged between my ribs, turning my sweaty t-shirt the colour of cheap lipstick. He laughs, but through the mangled bone and fabric it sounds like someone wanking into a verruca sock. Me? I don’t have too much to fucking laugh about…
***
Four days earlier.
The sky above the Dirty Lemon was the colour of diseased lungs. Fat clouds swirled above the pub, and the bronchial sky erupted as I pushed through the double-doors – bullets of rain thudding into the wheelchair ramp behind me.
Remy Cornish was sat adjacent to the cigarette machine, perched awkwardly on his mid-range mobility scooter. He chose the meeting place – the only pub in Paignton with a ramp – but it was no hardship on my part – I was coming here anyway…
I ordered a pint of Kronenbourg from Spacey Tracey and sat down opposite Remy. A thick, pissy stench hung in the air above him, and even the pub’s cigarette fug couldn’t mask it. Presumably showering has been a problem since Franco Moretti took his fucking kneecaps…
He made half-hearted speech-marks in the air with his sausage-like fingers as he told me that his “niece” Claudette was missing. Wanted me to find her. He passed me a photograph. It was a typical small-town glamour shot: badly lit and barely legal. She was a toothy brunette with small, uneven breasts. She didn’t so much have blowjob lips as gob-job gums. I felt my cock twitch, took Remy’s money and finished my pint. In that order.
***
I didn’t find Remy’s “niece” – the harbour master did. Wedged behind a dumpster that was overflowing with fish guts. The Herald Express nicknamed the killer ‘The Cartographer’, because he carefully wrapped each one of his victims’ bodies in old maps. Claudette was the fourth victim. She even looked pretty in the autopsy photo. No tattoos. No piercings. No life in her dead eyes. She had been wrapped in a map of Paignton; her spine was very slightly curved – just like Hyde Road.
I tried to give Remy his money back, but he decided to renegotiate our contract instead. Find the motherfucker responsible and deliver him to his portakabin up at Paignton Yards. His bloodshot eyes were so red-raw that they look like flesh-wounds. I nodded and slipped the money back into my jacket pocket. An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
***
The lead landed right in my lap, just like a cracked-out lap-dancer…
I met David Cummings outside Foxy Booze. He was wearing a denim jacket with a sheepskin collar. He had the word ‘Mum’ tattooed across his throat. It looked new. And infected.
He chuckled when he saw me.
“I heard you died.”
“You look disappointed.”
He laughed even louder.
He smoked two high-tar cigarettes in quick succession as he spilled the beans. Said he was in the cop-shop being processed for affray – he had been caught on CCTV beating a man with the metal bar from a dumbbell – when he heard the story.
While he was in the holding tank a guy named Lucius Lamont was cut loose due to a lack of evidence. The desk sergeants – Benson and Hedges – had been drinking brandy, and blabbed to Cummings that the skinny prick re-lacing his shoes in the police station lobby was the fucking Cartographer.
***
When I rip off his nylon mask, I see that Lucius has grey hair shaved to stubble and a few pubic-looking beard hairs along his crooked jaw. He is skinny like a stray dog, and it is hard to believe that a man so frail could be responsible for those strangled, mangled bodies.
He glares at me through his left eye – his crumpled right eye socket is already matted with dark, drying blood. He grins nastily, as I probe the knife-wound in my gut.
“You’re so full of doubt I can fucking smell it,” he lisps.
I shrug. The only thing I can smell is the wet stink of shit and blood.
“Is there another girl in the house?”
He shrugs.
“If you move I will kill you, you know that, don’t you?”
He shrugs again.
“I’m not afraid. Death is something that happens to other people.”
I trudge out of the room, checking the rest of the house as quickly as possible. Inside the third room I try is a teenage girl. She has been handcuffed to the rusty iron headboard. A stack of mouldy looking ordinance survey maps have been stacked neatly on the bedside table beside her.
She screams silently when she sees me, eyes pleading. Her left eye-socket has been broken and a single bloody tear slides down her badly bruised cheek.
I place my blood-soaked hammer on the floor and hold my hands up, trying to make myself look as unthreatening as possible.
I rip the parcel tape off her mouth, and remove the stained Y-fronts that have been wedged inside her mouth.
“Wh-wh-who are you?”
I consider answering, but grunt instead. Then I turn sharply and stomp back towards the lounge.
Lamont has replaced the nylon mask, but removed his filthy jeans. He is slumped against the wall, trying to masturbate with bloody fingers.
I weigh the gore-streaked hammer in my left hand, holding my pulsing guts in with my right. I swap hands and the hammer feels blood-slick against my palm.
I raise it high above my head, hoping that I don’t kill him – mainly because Remy will want his fucking money back…
He looks up at me expectantly, but doesn’t bother to stop playing with himself.
Crunch.
Fuck it.
Death is something that happens to other people…
I’m lying down, watching my prick wilting, fingerwalking my hand down to scratch at my pubes. She’s on her back, legs pulled up, facing the headboard. Eyes at half-mast, but she always looks like that, a bored teenager in an adult’s body. Clicking away on her phone, me still breathing hard. The only sounds in the world.
She puts her phone down and wrestles herself up on her elbows. Her eyes find the ashtray on the bedside table, and she groans and leans forward to grab it. While she’s sparking a good-sized roach, I swing my feet over the side towards the other table where my shit is. There’s maybe sixty milligrams of Percocet ground up on a torn magazine cover, and five more tens still to go. She passes the joint and blows a cloud of smoke that surrounds my head. I take in a lungful and hold while I break out two lines with an old credit card.
It’s a proper kick, what an old friend from school called a Perc shotty—take a hit of weed and do a bump. I’m lightheaded from holding my breath, and now the pill hits my brain along with the bud. I fall back into her lap, smashed and grinning like a spastic. She smacks my forehead and gives herself a kick.
“Silly little boy.”
Her eyes always tear up when she snorts shit. I first noticed it watching her do a bump with black eyeliner on. For some reason it got me all hot and bothered. Maybe next time I’ll give her the makeup and put a choke chain on her. God knows she’d get into it.
I love watching her smoke. One eye closed like a wink, sucking it down so slow and rolling it around in her mouth, digesting it, drooling it out. The same way she sucks cock. My eyes wander to the tattoo on the meat of her thigh, an Oriental dragon crawling up towards her prize. I’m sure she doesn’t know shit about Oriental mystical whoosits. Silly bitch. I love her.
Christ, I could live in this lap. It’s something you see a lot in the city—scrawnyass man with a fat girl. It’s that cushion, that tender loving care you can only feel when you’re pressed up against all that warm flesh, and when you fuck you can watch her whole body ripple, see that small patch of zits bounce around on her funhouse ass. I think it’s some misplaced maternal shit. Gimme something to squeeze up against on a cold day. A good solid ride.
“We should get a bounce house.”
She coughs and sticks the joint between my lips. “What?”
“Yeeeaaaaah,” I say, stretching the word out with my smoke. “One a those big inflatable bitches that kids jump around in.”
She lights two cigarettes and gives me one and I drag deep, arching my back to open my lungs.
“Why a bounce house?”
“Think about it.” I draw a picture in the air. “Fuckin’ in one a those things.” I giggle. I’ve always hated the sound of my laughter, too high pitched like a kid’s. And I can never control a laugh.
“Shit,” she says, “we could get one an’ charge people to fuck in it.”
“You’re a genius, babe. I’m picturing it now—evening with the sun going down, us stepping out into the twilight, fishbowling and fucking in a bounce house. Then we put up a sign on the sidewalk, Open For Business. Ten bucks a throw, two-for-one Fridays and Saturdays. Group discounts. Maybe even make enough to hire some poor kid to clean up the spunk in between customers.”
“You’re a motherfuckin visionary,” she says.
“What can I say?”
“Shit.” She slaps my shoulder. “I saw one a those, on that street by the Big Y.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, some kid’s party I guess.”
“Is it still there?”
Her eyes go distant for a moment, computing. When she’s stoned like this, you can look in her eyes and see the machinery at work.
“I think I saw it this morning. So yeah, could be.”
I’m picturing it now.
I take the magazine and divvy up the lines. She might be the host, but it’s my shit and I’m doing the cutting. The powder burns my sinuses and I snort it back and run a finger under my nostril. A blob of mucus comes away thick with medicine, and before I can move she’s got her mouth on my digit, milking up every grain. Later, I think I’ll put some on my dick.
When she’s got her line up and away towards her brain, I slide off the bed and find my clothes.
“What’s up,” she says. I’m pulling my boxers on and grabbing a stained undershirt.
“Get your clothes on, babe.”
Her eyes are so pretty, squinty and red but bright, too. There’s still some real, untarnished beauty in there. Like, I wanna fuck her eyes.
“We goin’ somewhere?”
“Let’s go get us a bounce house.”
Bitter on the lips,
spirits of juniper berries
bless and honey tongues
with bite and fire.
Sugared words
that have long abandoned us
take wing in ambrosial flight
from our dark corners—
winter suns—
thawing the frost
that hardens our hearts
and tender fingertips.
Chestnut hair falls before your eyes
as you read, biting your lip—
the smell of you,
tearing like a machete
through bands of cigarette smoke
that haunt the air between us.
You go to the kitchen to make us another drink.
Suckin’ gin from ice cubes,
I sit,
worshiping you, silently,
in reverie
for letting me miss you,
again.
But that’s the story of you and I—
hard to swallow
save these fleeting moments—
like bubbles
at the back of the throat
that make us smile.
Looking out the window,
clouds drifting across pale azure,
I wonder where the hell I’ve been all this time,
as crickets join the fun—
even if just for a while.
1988. I’m six. My first funeral. Never met Mike or his parents. Mom is crying and hugging other relatives I’ve never come across. They talk of things from previous decades, remembrances of a time before I existed. I go up to the casket. Overheard the “napping against the tree” story from Mike’s dad. Still looks like he is napping. This is the first dead body I have ever seen.
Mike was mom’s cousin. Was in his early-30s. Been out fishing with friends all day, drinking beers on the boat while they tried to catch walleyes. Sun went down. Mike and friends went back to shore. Friends hitched the boat to their truck and said goodnight to Mike. He climbed in his truck and drove home. Country road twisted and turned back in on itself. Mike, still boozy, going too fast, went off road. Front right end of his truck struck a tree. Mike wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He burst through the windshield, bounced along the ground and slammed into a different tree. Old man that came upon the accident later said it looked Mike had sat down with his back to the tree and taken a nap.
Mike still has the brown bushy hair and moustache that he has in pictures next to the casket. Pictures from before he died. He wears the kind of glasses friends and I will later in life refer to as “Jeffrey Dahmer glasses.” He’s smiling in all his pictures. Friends hug him. Parents lean on him and give him kisses on his cheeks. Redheaded woman named Roxanne poses next to Mike, her right hand on his chest, her head on his shoulder. Someone told me they were dating. I don’t see Roxanne at the funeral.
***
Grant Medical Center. 1989. I am seven-years old. In a waiting room on a floor high in the building, reading a book called Eating Ice Cream with a Werewolf. Uncle John is sitting next to me, watching a baseball game. Keeping me company while my mom, dad and aunt Cathy go back to my grandfather’s room. Grandpa Jack has cancer. Will be years before I learn that he developed cancer only a year or so after I was born 1981. A period of remission happened, so no one ever told me he was ill.
Aunt Cathy comes out. Takes me by the hand and leads me down the unusually dark hospital hall. It is April. It is spring. Sun blasts through the windows at the end of the hall. Lights above us are turned off. I smell urine, medicinal creams, bleached fabrics and an odor I will later come to think of as the “stink of death.” Smells like rot, like a body being eaten from the inside out. In my older years I consider it the smell of fear.
The stink is making me sad. Cathy leads me into my grandfather’s room. Mom and dad are there. Uncle Pat and his wife are sitting in the corner. Didn’t even know they came. Cathy’s sons, Brian and Andy, are standing next to the large hospital window. Both older than me. Andy graduated high school last year. Came up from Miami University to see grandpa. I think Andy is cool.
Grandma sits at the end of the bed, watching her husband.
Stand in front of my parents. Mom puts her hands around my shoulders. Grandpa talks to Pat about something when he notices me.
“Jay!” He pats his hospital bed. Mom helps me up and I sit next to him. Tubes all over him – coming out of his arms, from under his gown, one hooked to his nose. Rubs my back, asks me how I’m doing. I talk as a little kid would talk, still unaware of how heavy the whole situation is. Grandpa laughs at my stories, wants to know how school is going, asks me why anyone would ever want to eat ice cream with a werewolf.
He points to the state office tower. Columbus spreads out below the window. I follow the aim of his finger.
“See that? I helped build that.” He was a pipefitter, a loyal union man, took pride in his work. Navy guy in the 40s. Drove one of the Higgins boats during the invasion of Normandy in WWII. The opening scene of Saving Private Ryan? He went through that.
Talk a little bit longer before mom says it’s time to get me some lunch. Hug grandpa Jack. He kisses me on the cheek. I leave not knowing this will be the last time we speak.
Weeks later. Lunch. Mom, aunt Cathy, grandma, me. Eat hospital food in the hospital cafeteria. Grandma is crying. Grandpa is unresponsive, on life support. Mom says he looks like he’s sleeping. Time to let him go. Pneumonia has settled in. His cancerous body, too weak to fight anymore, breaks down and allows pneumonia to win the war.
“I can’t lose Jack,” my grandma whispers.
At the funeral, I think he is smiling. Lay my hand on his. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Kantner, comes to the funeral home to pay her respects. Mom bawls when she sees her, hugs my teacher tightly. I sit on Kantner’s lap later and she rubs my arm, tells me things will be okay.
As they bury grandpa, a bagpiper in a kilt plays “Amazing Grace.”
***
Someone banging on our apartment door. 1994. It is summer. I am twelve going on thirteen. Mom opens the door. A neighbor girl, Ashley, is screaming and crying.
“Jeremy! Jeremy!”
She points to the backyard. Mom and me step outside. Her older brother Jeremy has fashioned a crude noose and is hanging from one of the hook-steps embedded in the telephone pole. His body thrashes. The hands are pulling at the rope around his neck.
“Oh, Jesus! Oh shit! Jason, call 911!”
I run inside, grab the cordless phone, call for a squad. As I’m on the phone, I step back out on the front porch. Mom tries to climb the fence separating the apartment’s backyard from the glass factory behind us. Jeremy’s arms are looser, his body only twitching. One arm gets too weak and falls away from his neck. Mom balances herself on top of the fence and is about to climb the hook-steps when the rope breaks and Jeremy falls roughly fifteen onto the factory parking lot.
Mom jumps down. Woman on the end of the phone says paramedics are on their way, that I can hang up. Run to the fence. Other kids from other apartments have come outside, are spilling over and through the broken fence. Shimmy through an opening. Mom has pulled the noose off his neck and tossed it aside. She gives him mouth-to-mouth and pumps his chest with her hands. Ashley is weeping. There is clear snot rolling out of both of her nostrils.
Mom keeps giving him CPR until the squad arrives. They go to work on him. Mom corrals us kids away from the scene, moves us back to the other side of the fence. Fire truck arrives, and they try to help the boy. Seems like days but is only maybe five minutes when one of the paramedics calmly says, “Call it.” They mean call the time of death. Saw that in some movies. While the others load Jeremy onto a stretcher, two paramedics jump the fence to talk to everyone. Mom tells her story. I tell mine. Ashley says parents are at work. She says Jeremy talked about killing himself every day. They thank my mom for trying to help. Ashley goes with them to the hospital.
Jeremy was only fourteen. Mom and me don’t talk much for the rest of the day. Jeremy’s parents never come around to ask mom what happened. I recommend going over to their place and talking to them. Mom says they probably don’t want to talk.
***
My second grandfather is dead. Dad is sitting next to me in the funeral home sobbing, stifling moans of sadness. It is only maybe the second or third time I’ve ever seen him cry. Once was when we went to see the movie Sling Blade. Billy Bob Thornton’s character has a moment where he berates his abusive, bigoted, now-disabled father. Dad cried at that scene.
It is 1999. I am seventeen, almost eighteen. It is June. Ralph Sharon is dead. He was 84. He was a mean sonnavabitch, meaner than my dad ever has been. He was more physical, more willing to fight, somehow even crueler with his words. He talked of burning his neighbor’s house down in the 70s, when a black lesbian couple moved in. He tolerated them, sometimes even stood in the driveway and talked to them. I think he didn’t burn the house down simply because he didn’t want to go to prison. Had there been no risk, believe he would’ve happily torched the place. Lifelong attitude wasn’t far removed from David Duke, presidential candidate and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
But he’s dead now, and I feel nothing. Don’t care. Mom kept me away from dad’s side of the family for a reason. Room is filled with sniffles and weeping and hugs and reminisces of the other grandfather I had. The one I barely had any relationship with. I have to be a pallbearer today. I think about dropping the casket on purpose and claiming it was an accident. Nah, too risky. Don’t wanna deal with drama. Just want to get this day over with.
Dad grabs my hand, squeezes tightly. Don’t know if this is legit or part of a show. Hold it for as long as I can stand and break away, venturing toward the casket. Ralph is inside. He is frowning. He looks miserable. The funeral people couldn’t even work their magic to make his dumbass face look faux-pleasant. He is angry, even in death.
We bury him. I go home, play Mario Kart 64 with my friends.
***
January 2004. I am 22. Terrible snowstorm moved in. Have to go to work. I despise snow. I despise winter. Driving is a treacherous, time-consuming. Back end of my car sways if I go just a smidge over 25 mph. Going to take forever to get from Canal Winchester to Pickerington, to my job at the movie theater. Call one of my managers, Zack, tell him I might be late. He says to be careful and take my time.
Crawl down High Street, heading toward Route 33. As I get closer to the freeway, I see a couple cars parked alongside the road. Fucking wonderful. What is going on?
A van is blocking our lane, preventing us from crossing 33. Passenger side is facing us. It is smashed in. Notice another car parked on the opposite side of High Street. Its front end is crumpled, and black smoke is pouring out of the hood. Two teenage girls and a man who looks like their father are standing upwind from the smoke. Man is holding a shirt or a towel against his mouth. A woman, who doesn’t look like she was involved in the accident, is talking to him. Teen girls are crying. One has squatted down, is plugging her ears, body heaving. Man removes the shirt or towel and talks to the woman. His mouth is a bloody void.
I pull up behind one of the parked cars and head toward the van. An older man, probably in his sixties, is pacing alongside it. He looks frenzied. Winter wind is blowing his thinning hair all over the place. His pupils are enlarged. A different woman is trying to keep pace with him, rubbing his back and trying to calm him.
“Oh, god! She’s dead! She’s dead! What—what am I gonna—” Guttural howls erupt from deep inside him.
A guy close to my age comes around from the other side of the van. He is on his cell phone. Moves the mouthpiece away, nods at me.
“Hey,” he says.
“You need any help, man,” I ask.
The guy shakes his head. “We got help coming.”
“What happened?”
“That car—” he points to the car with the man and teen girls, “came off Bowen Road way too fast and broadsided this dude.” He thumbs in the direction of the frazzled old man.
I see the old woman in the van.
I didn’t see her walking up. She was too quiet. Man with his girls and his blood. Older man hollering in terror. They got my attention. Old woman is sitting in the passenger seat. Window is gone. She is wearing her seatbelt. Head leans against the door, like she’s napping. The right side of her face is covered in blood. Never seen so much blood in person. My stomach drops. I’m lightheaded. Could pass out right now, vomit, shit myself.
“You can go on, man,” the guy on the phone says. “Thanks for stopping. A bunch of motherfuckers just kept driving by before these two women stopped.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’ll get out of the, uh, way. Hope everything is okay.”
Everything isn’t okay, you fucking moron. Woman is dead. What a jackass thing to say, Jason.
Get to work. I’m in the projection booth today. Eight hours in a gray cinderblock hallway with no windows. Can’t stop thinking about the old woman. Call mom, tell her what happened. When I get off work, she tells me the local news had a brief story on the accident. The old woman did die or was dead on the scene. News doesn’t specify, nor do they give any names. Just that the woman was 67-years old. Guy with the teen girls did blow through a red light on Bowen Road, couldn’t stop because he was going too fast on the snow and ice.
I despise snow. I despise winter.
***
July 4th, 2011. I am twenty-nine. Driving home from shit-ass job. After midnight. Pull up to my friend’s place. As I walk, my phone rings. Mom.
“Grandma is gone,” she says.
Broken hip sent her to a nursing home. Miserable. Lonely. Unhappy. Still missed Jack. Quit eating. Nurses tried to get her to down some kind of food. Woman was stubborn. My belief is she willed herself to die. Was 84. Knew her body was almost done. Didn’t see any reason to stick around at a party she didn’t enjoy.
Leave my friend’s. Meet mom at the nursing home. We’re the first ones there. Grandma is under a blanket. Looks like she is just asleep. Nurse explains she checked on grandma at 11:30. Things were normal. Half-hour later, she’s dead.
Nurse leaves us alone with her. Grandma’s dentures aren’t in. Jaw hangs open. I try to push it shut, give her some dignity. Jaw drops back open. Uncle Pat shows up. Wife he had when grandpa died at Grant is no longer around. Divorced years ago. Cousins I haven’t seen in years show up, too. Aunt Cathy and uncle John come. All discuss what happens from here. Mom, Cathy and Pat talk with the funeral people who show up. They will transport her to the home in Pickerington.
July 7th. Service, then burial. I am a pallbearer. Tighten my grip to make sure I don’t lose grandma. Watch her casket lowered into the ground. She was the last grandparent I had. Dad’s mom died before I was born. This was the only grandmother I ever knew. She is in the ground next to Jack.
***
I am 35. June 2016. Mount Carmel East. Uncle John is hooked up to a breathing machine. Still wide-awake. Still struggling to breath. Arthritis has limited his mobility. Two strokes have limited everything else. Body winding down. Aunt Cathy sits next to him. Mom and I stand beside him. Keep crying quietly, keep wiping my eyes.
This was bound to happen. All knew John’s time was limited. Last few years have been hard on the man. Maintained his cheerfulness, though. Never felt sorry for self or lashed out at anyone. John is smart. John knows the deal.
He was the main father figure I had growing up. Don’t know if he knows this. He can’t talk because of the machine. I can’t talk because I will fall to pieces. Peter Jackson’s King Kong is on TV. Watch the scene with Kong and Naomi Watts playing on the frozen pond. Scene made me cry when I saw it at the theater years ago. Stomping on my heart now.
Nurses and doctors come in. Time to clean and change John. Cathy, mom and I got to leave. John takes ahold of my hand, squeezes tightly. We lock eyes for a moment and I kiss him on top of his bald head. His other arm wraps around me as tightly as possible. Does the same thing to mom.
Cathy gets the call in the middle of the night. He passed quietly in his sleep. He is cremated. The box is heavier than expected. John was a smaller man.
***
Mom is 70. Older than her father when he died. In good health. In good spirits. I worry about her passing. But maybe I get to have her around for a long time. Cathy is nearing 71. Had a mastectomy years ago. Still smokes, especially because she misses John. Talks about being lonely. Tries to remain happy.
Dad might be dead. Don’t know. Google his obit from time to time. Nothing comes up. Don’t know what I’d do with this information. Satisfaction? Sense of closure? Dunno. Need to stop doing it. Best to continue life as though he’s already gone.
Doesn’t feel like I’m a few weeks from turning 37. Presumed life would be a bore at this point. Thought I’d be nothing more than a husk of a man, with a dead-end job, a loveless marriage and kids that annoy me. Don’t feel old, despite most of my classmates being born when I was in high school. I’ve remained unshackled. Free to bend myself anyway I wanted.
I think of Mike, though. And grandpa Jack. And Jeremy. And grandpa Ralph. And the old woman. And grandma. And uncle John. Their lives stretched before them once, just as mine does. Just as yours does. I saw them in their twilight, sometimes after the light had completely left them. Someday, someone will see me in my twilight. Hope it’s not soon. Hope there aren’t many regrets. Hope I look like I’m only sleeping.
She screamed, as always, fed up with my vices, and that I simply didn’t indulge her rage once only fueled her more.
“You son of a bitch! Do you not feel anything?” she asked.
She was full of shit and mock concern she usually added for good measure.
“Yes, I feel all sorts of things,” I replied as I lit my cigarette from the candle that had been placed upon the table (I’m guessing) to set the mood, but honestly, I didn’t think they had a scented candle called ‘tantrum throwing bitch’ on the market.
“Yeah? What do you feel besides the need for another drink?”
“Sweetheart, there is so little you truly seem to know about me. Now have a drink with me and relax.”
“All you ever want to do is drink or fuck, you lazy bastard!”
“Well… what better thing to do is there than drink or fuck? You have something against orgasms, I take it?”
“You don’t really want me, it’s strictly for the sex, you jerk.”
“Well, I enjoy having sex with you. By the way, your ass looks marvelous in that dress, my dear, any chance I can see you out of it?” I said as I kicked back the last of my whiskey.
“You’re a pig. You don’t need a real woman, you just need a whore.”
“Are they not real women too, sweetheart?” I asked, laughing as I reached for the decanter to pour myself another drink.
She looked at me in disgust. “You’re a drunk!”
“Yes,” I replied. “And your point?”
“It’s all one big joke with you. Nothing is serious, you’ll never want to clean your act up. Settle down, give me a kid!”
“Well, I would have a while back, sugar, but they all run so fast I just can’t seem to catch one for you.”
“Fuck you ! You ignorant son of a bitch!” she said, as I let her go into yet another hissy fit.
I flicked my ashes into a wine glass on the table.
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Most, I believe most, call it smoking my dear.”
“That’s a good wine glass. What if I had wanted a drink of wine?”
“My dear, do you not know me that well? Wine is for painters and women or old gay men pretending to be straight. I drink whiskey. That is it.”
“Yeah, and whatever else happens to be around.”
“Yes indeed, I do.”
She sat at the table, looking to me more as some sort of bad child than her equal.
“Why the hell do I stay with you”?
“Good question, sweetheart,” I said as I began to stand. “You know I have many feelings; in fact, right now I’m going to have to run because of one.”
“Yeah? What feeling is that?” she said in mock interest.
“Well, I’m feeling like I have to piss. Excuse me.”
She said nothing as I left the room.
When I returned she was gone.
So I guess, to my question of seeing her out of that dress?
Well, it was a no.
She was gone, and I simply drank till the night bled into the day.
Some people truly need to find a sense of humor.
She yearned for the love of romance novels, not the reality of its existence.
And she yearned for the romance of Paris.
As the candle slowly died I watched the sun creep through the small kitchen window.
Outside the whores yelled at passing cars, and the city breathed life once again.
One thing for sure.
This truly wasn’t Paris.
Do you think there’s any chance I don’t have to be your maid of honor? Turns out they found someone in need of a kidney near me, and I’m a match. I either have to go to the hospital by Friday and let them take a kidney, or make some equivalent monetary contribution. So if I didn’t have to pay for my dress for your wedding—o-of course we’re best friends! Don’t cry! Forget I said anything. Who needs two kidneys, really?
***
I just got the message! As of five minutes ago, I’m a crypto-billionaire. After lunch I’m gonna march right in there and tell my boss to—oh wait, new message. I’m broke! They’re gonna foreclose on my house by the end of the week if I can’t—oh! Wait! I’m rich again. Nope, broke. Hang on! Oh. This time? No. Yes!
***
So you’ll come to my housewarming?
Don’t talk so loudly about your new place! I assume it’s bigger than the last?
A little, but—you don’t think they’ll detect the spare square feet and assign someone to live with me?
They might, so let me quickly tell you how I got away with it for a while. I put vases all over the floor to trick the pressure sensors, then declared myself a hoarder. Better to lie to a therapist every month than have to take in a homeless person. But then my virtual assistant snitched on me, and now I live with Joe.
***
Since when was skin a human right anyway?
I know! I for one am proud that we’re constantly exposed to extreme levels of radiation.
Now we finally live in a nation in which we can see beyond our superficial differences.
For sure! I can’t tell who’s what.
Everyone just looks sticky.
***
Citizen! I see you’re not wearing your Church of the Latter-Day Action Heroes badge. You must be a tourist, otherwise you’d know that we control this district. May I see your papers? You’re from here but haven’t accepted our lord Schwarzenegger as your personal savior? Then we require an immediate donation!
***
Hi, I got the message this morning that I’m on trial. I was just wondering if you could tell me what for? Yes, I’ll hold… You’ll tell me if I pay you five hundred dollars?! I was hoping I’d have money left over to buy a celebrity avatar for court! How will I get the jury to like me now? You might as well just lock me up already!
***
After they installed the new defense systems at my complex, they changed the kaiju attack alert from burgundy all the way down to chartreuse.
You must be thrilled!
Not really. They’re jacking up the rent as a result, so now I can’t afford to live there anymore.
***
Did you read that new novel by—
Of course I didn’t.
I was just joking. No one did.
I take it The AI That Consumes All Literature told you it now offers its brain injection subscription plan to ninety nine percent of the population? That’s what I learned when they last injected me.
It’s awesome. Now we can get back to what book clubs were always about: getting tipsy and bitching about the people who didn’t show up.
***
You like my tunic? It’s genuine goatsilk.
That’s what my alimony is going towards? Supporting genetically engineered goats that produce spider silk?
There’s more than one way to produce goatsilk, you know.
Please tell me Mikey got his braces and Holly’s still attending violin lessons.
Of course! This was a gift from Bill.
There’s a “Bill”?
You’d like him. He’s an urban farmer. He has his very own herd of goatspiders.
***
So the last man on earth sits in his chair, right?
I think I know this one!
Then I broke down his door to tell him about my updated privacy policy.
I didn’t see that coming.
Well, neither did he.
They sauntered into Marrotti’s Coffee Shop like they were going to protest a free speech rally. Each one dressed in black from head to toe. They both had identical pink triangle tattoos on their left hands to prove a point:
Individuality Is Dead.
Martha was taken aback by the all black staff.
“This is like, so racist! How dare they only hire black people? They aren’t their fucking slaves. I like, seriously despise this country!”
“Yeah, this is bullshit!” replied Oswald. “I’m feeling really triggered right now! I may have to go burn an American flag!”
“Calm down,” replied Martha. “I’ll fix this. It’s our rights as repressed citizens!”
Martha pushed an elderly, white woman out her way, stormed up to the front of the line and said, “Excuse me, my fellow indentured servant. Do you have a “Safe Space” for my friend? America is getting the best of him again. He needs assistance!”
The black barista gave her a solemn gaze for three seconds, until his iPhone went off. After, he reached into his pocket, to check his Twitter notifications.
“Like, what the fuck?” said Martha. Can’t you see my friend is dying over here?”
Oswald was shaking like an innocent member of Antifa, who was tasered by a cop over all the left reasons. You could hear the sound of his teeth chattering.
An Asian couple slowly rose from their seats to exit the establishment, leaving a half empty pot of tea behind.
They’ve seen enough already to last a lifetime.
Martha vehemently clapped her hands three times to get the baristas attention, as she said,
“I’m a paying customer with my dad’s credit card! Like, I hope you’re not expecting a tip after this!”
The barista laughed out loud as he put away his iPhone. “Welcome to Marrotti’s Coffee Shop,” he said. “Can I take your order?”
“Yes,” replied Martha. “I’ll take two skim milk lattes and a God damn safe space for my friend!”
At this point, Oswald was foaming at the mouth.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but I don’t know what a safe space is.” He typed away on the cash register. “Your total is $4.20.”
Martha, in a fit of rage, screamed at the barista, “I’m not a ma’am, I’m a fucking pronoun! Like, are you really serious? And you gave me an anti-Semitic total on top of it! You people make me sick!”
The black baristas demeanor changed instantaneously after the “you people” remark.
“Yo, what the fuck you mean, you people? Bitch, are you challenging my black privilege? I will go Black Lives Matters on yo white ass right now, ‘aight!”
Martha, accustomed to male brutality from all the public protests she attends, stood her ground by saying, “I’m a fucking pronoun, you indentured servant! And this is fucking fascist! Don’t you dare think for a minute that my dumpster diving friends and I won’t storm this racist establishment! The right to protest is ours only!”
“Fuck you, and your daddy’s credit card!” The barista pointed to the door saying, “Get the fuck out, whitey!”
A loud thump distracted them from quarreling like two morons strung out on fluoridated water. Martha turned around to see Oswald lying on the floor in the fetal position.
“You did this!” screamed Martha. “You and your fascist ways did this! That’s it! You’ve forced my index finger! I’m calling George Soros!”
The barista, along with his two other black coworkers, jumped over the counter in an attempt to physically remove Martha from the premises. She was throwing around punches like a man with a thick dick.
The baristas cautiously surrounded her until the time was precise and BAM! A flurry of punches came her way, knocking her off her feet. They grabbed her and Oswald by the legs, dragging them outside to the street. Martha, in and out of consciousness, was murmuring, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!”
Horror Sleaze Trash 