Forever West | Alexander T. Damle

            The sun sets over the highway and forms abstract patterns as the shadows get all protracted by the mountains, cacti caught in something stark, a fox darts across three lanes of traffic and vanishes into some low brush. To one side of the road the ocean roars and it cries in desolation and it is alone. Out on it somewhere a boat is tossed by waves and over the side a young sailor vomits, first time on the sea, lost for love so lost at sea so lost always lost. And back on the highway the man coasts along at 65, his headlights come on automatically and the radio drums out some top 40s hit. He taps on the wheel out of time with the music, expectantly for something, and he thinks about a funny thing he heard at work today, but he can’t remember what it was, only that it was funny. The sun is pink and purple and it reminds him of the guts of a dog that got hit by a car in front of his house when he was a kid. He saw it get hit, and he watched its owner come out and cradle it gently as it bled out, not caring for the blood that got all over him, just cradling his dying dog, whispering something, tears in his eyes. The man moves into the left lane to pass a truck.

            The trucker smokes a cigarette that he holds out his window, his arm tanned from driving this way for too long. He yawns slightly, then sets his left hand on the wheel to hold it steady as he turns up the volume on the radio. It doesn’t matter what’s playing, he turns up the volume anyway. Has to go a hundred more miles tonight and the sun is setting. It’s orange and the sea is orange, blood orange, all blood orange, and it reflects off the roof of the Beamer that just passed him, gets in his eyes, and he squints even though he is wearing sunglasses. He sees a sign for a gas station at the next exit and decides to get off, though he still has half a tank, wants to stretch his legs. The sun wavers and flickers in the sky simulacra record spinning tick tick tick of the clock plastic pink flamingo on a fake green plastic lawn in front of a trailer home, woman smokes a cigarillo and wears sunglasses too big for her face, her dress has flowers on it and her face is deeply lined and she swears about the heat, and behind her a different ocean beats its breakers desperately against sand and rock, clawing away, cutting and slicing and sucking gastric bypass and the doctor says something to the nurse about drinks tonight. His hand slips.

            The motorcyclist watches the truck swerve slightly, then right itself, and decides not to pass. Then he watches the truck get off at the exit so he speeds up again. Sundry store neon indian plastic diaphragm American supper time sadness summertime sadness pop music peach ice cream pretty girl bare legs summertime sadness summertime sadness remember how she used to laugh how she used to make him laugh doesn’t remember why they broke up doesn’t matter sipping a beer with his best friend before he shipped out desert sun dust came back didn’t come back but still here now here then back again summertime. Rev up gear pop snap crackle pop hoping for a dream, trying to remember, wishes he was young again, remake every mistake he’s ever made, wishes he’d kissed her that night, wishes he hadn’t kissed her that day, night then day, light flows over the horizon and it’s sometimes green, reflecting the sea, emerald, a far off land, a more distant shore abandoned for promise of this shore become brighter, who knows anymore, doesn’t know anything, girl’s hand in his walking down the hill and he remembers he didn’t kiss her either and he remembers the punchline to a joke he heard once, but he doesn’t remember the joke. Wonder wander wish a better tomorrow for a better today for a never tomorrow for an always today for a dream of a dream of a dream of death. Does he not bleed for his better nature? Then he gets off the highway too, and he pulls into the parking lot of a little old diner and he takes off his helmet and carries it as he walks inside, and the waitress smiles as she seats him. He orders a chocolate shake and a cheeseburger and a slice of blueberry pie and he eats his burger then she brings him his pie, and when he tastes it he remembers a day when he was small.

            When the sun sets, do you look to the west, and when you look to the west do you see your dreams dying? Because in the west the sun never sets because your dreams lie always further west. So you look to the west and you look to the west and you look to the west and you forget to look down and over the edge of the cliff you plunge, canyon walls struck distant passage of water through time down you go, down you go, and the river that surges below cuts ever deeper the canyon so how can you ever stop falling? And yet stop you must and you must stop so you stop and yet the river keeps flowing. And still you look to the west.

            The waitress takes off her apron and says goodbye to the cook on her way out the door, then she gets in the driver’s seat of her beat up old Honda and drives home. She watches TV while she eats dinner and through a window she sees a neighbor washing dishes. The neighbor looks like her father. He used to drink bourbon. The neighbor used to drink wine. The waitress used to drink vodka. They all used to drink and now they all don’t drink together. The waitress stares at her TV and it’s a commercial featuring an actor who is dead now selling a product that doesn’t matter now and she wishes she just had a little more money. If she had money she could get out of here (here?) and go there (there?) and she could get away from the sea.

As a girl the sea was salt and wind and glistening blue reflecting luminescent the clouds horizon line the sea become as one as all, as a girl the sea was a boy just when boys became more than the sea would become, but then the boy went away and there were more boys and then as more boys went away the sea became a burden. So now if only she had money she could get away (and go where? Cities scare her and the desert isolates her, forests startle and hide and the plains clutch and grasp but then they aren’t the sea, and perhaps...) owls crow out their night cry as on TV the commercial ends and now that same actor again looks out at her and now he’s someone else. As a girl she fell in love with the actor - but then he was alive, and now the waitress thinks she still might be in love with him, because he’s dead and because the girl inside her (buried, dormant) once loved him.

Falling

In love

Is easy.

Being

In love

Is hard.

Cages and voices are cages are voices are prisons are prisms are mirrors are genuflection are deflections are protestations are remembrances are fragmentations are dreams are the sea are a smell are a voice are a gentle laugh are the taste of salt (lips and sea) are the end of the beginning but it all must end.

            The director calls a cut and the actor steps back from the camera’s gaze, the stage light’s glow, the live audience’s stare, and grabs a drink of water, and he watches her slender legs disappear behind the set and he calls out to her as she disappears but she doesn’t hear him, and yet still the audience and the lights and the camera, and yet still they try to see through him but he can’t hardly see them (for the footlights in his eyes) and she is gone, and he is left with only the memory of that slender leg.

            In three years he will be committed and they will tell him she was but a whisper of smoke on his chemical imbalance but he will tell them she had to be real because if she wasn’t real then none of it ever will be real, but they then assured him she definitely was not real.

            In five years he will put a shotgun between his lips and pull the trigger, and his brains will paint a picture on the wall behind where his head once was, and it will be a picture of the girl who was naught but smoke.

            You once misheard the lyrics to a song, and despite listening to the song a hundred times, you could only ever hear the misheard lyrics, they came to you in a dream.

            A singer once sings a song and one set of words pierce her lips.

            And yet another pierce her mind.

            And on her mind too is the leg of a pretty girl she knows she’ll never have.

            And the man who records her voice day in and day out

            Will fall asleep remembering, loving, her face only.

            Even as his hearing goes and he knows soon the day will come when he has no reason to ever again even look on her face.

            And even then her voice as recorded with his failing ears will call out to people the world over, and they will all fall in love at once and sometimes they’ll fall in love with the voice and sometimes they’ll fall in love with the face across from them as they hear the voice, and sometimes they’ll fall in love with falling in love but what is assured is that some day they will all fall in love because falling in love is what we do and yet some day too we will fall out of love.

            The singer drives along a highway on a cliff by the sea. She watches a BMW pass a truck. Then she sees the truck swerve. Then she watches the truck exit the highway, and at the next exit she watches a man on a motorcycle exit too. Then the sun reflects through her windshield just so and she loses briefly control of the wheel.

The Yellow Lines on the Highway are Legion | Alexander T. Damle

            The man and the woman, bodies young and unblemished, drive the vintage Chevy Malibu through the fog, a great obfuscating body stretched out a million miles fore and aft the muscle car, they an old pirate ship rolling across the ocean waves, searching out its quarry through the endless, its very soul extant only in the mind’s ether, just another dream of a past created to assuage the priceless insecurity of the present.

            “Where the hell are we?” The man rubs his hands together as he asks.

            “I thought you knew.”

            “How would I know?”

            “You’re the passenger, aren’t you supposed the be the navigator?”

            “But you’re the driver.”

            “We should stop somewhere, get directions.”

            “Do you see anywhere to stop?”

            “I don’t see anything.”

            The man looks earnestly at the woman, ponders her face, old acne scars, ratty, bleached hair, a nice enough body though, all things considered. He finds himself thinking about her and finds realizes he can’t quite remember who she is. He wonders if they’ve ever had sex, and he feels his dick getting hard.

            The woman grips the steering wheel tight between her hands, and tries to keep one eye on the man, even as she tries to peer through the fog bank, get some glimpse at where the road goes, if it goes anywhere at all. She wonders if the man drugged her, because she can’t seem to remember just who she is or how she got there.

            The two look out the windshield, minds equally occupied, see the double yellow line running down the middle of the road, rushing underneath the hood, eating up distance as it goes. The man tries to see out the side window, but he can barely see the embankment at road’s edge, let alone anything beyond.

            Eventually a glow rises up in front of them, harsh, unnatural, blues and reds, then the glow turns into the familiarity of a gas station sign, and underneath it, a little gas station, and the woman pulls the car off the highway and up in front of a pump.

            “Do we need gas?”

            “The needle is almost on empty.”

            “Huh. Do you have money?”

            “Why would I have money?”

            “I don’t know.” The man checks his own pockets, finds a wallet, opens it and sees a few hundred dollars in an unfamiliar currency. “Where are we?”

            “Didn’t you already ask me that?”

            “I mean what country.”

            “America. Where else could we be?” The man simply shrugs.

            The woman begins to pump gas, and the man heads inside, looking for something to eat. There is no one at the counter, and he begins to peruse the shelves. He picks up a package of what look like Twinkies but are called Yellow Cock, and he wonders at this, but when he looks at them again, they are covered in a thick layer of mould, and what he thought was a little bit of sticky white stuffing oozing out, he sees now is a writhing maggot. He drops the package and backs away, then sees all the food is mouldy and rotten, and he begins to smell something deeply foul all about him, and he stumbles towards the back of the store, looking for the toilet, feeling vomit rising in his chest, but the smell only gets stronger.

            At the back of the place is the men’s room, and he pushes the door open without knocking, and he finds who he assumes is the clerk, scrubbing frantically at the walls with a giant sponge, hung green and heavy with mould.

            “Oh, hello. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.” The man pushes open the stall door and vomits into the toilet. As he raises his head, he sees that the walls are coated in a substance he doesn’t even want to consider. He backs out of the stall. “I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mess in here. I just can’t seem to get rid of this stuff.”

            “Wha... what is it?”

            “Come here, take a look.” The clerk gestures to where he is scrubbing. The man leans in. Upon the wall are a million little bodies, diseased and festering, covered in tiny maggots, blood and pus and a sickly green substance oozing out of every crack and hole and pore. And then he hears them all screaming, a million tiny voices, lost and forgotten. The man goes back into the toilet and vomits again.

            “What the fuck?”

            “I’m sure I’ll get it, I just need more time. Do you need gas?”

            “Y...yes...”

            “If you wouldn’t mind going out to the counter, I’ll be right with you.”

            The man goes out and finds the woman standing there, waiting.

            “Did you see the food?”
            “You don’t know the half of it.”

            The two stand together awkwardly, and the man once tries to look at the woman. When he does so, he finds she suddenly looks much prettier, and he looks away again. Eventually the clerk comes out, and they pay for their gas.

            “Hey, do you know anywhere we can get something to eat around here that isn’t, well...” The woman avoids his eyes as she asks.

            “Sure, there’s a diner a little ways down the road.”

            “How far is a little ways?” The man interjects.

            “A little ways. I’m sorry, I have to get back to the mould, if I leave it too long, it will burst its bonds, eat through the very walls, and then where would we be? This entire land, possessed by the stuff. Can you imagine? And it’s such lovely country.”

            The two hurry back to the car and pull back onto the highway. If possible, now the fog seems thicker, and the sense of claustrophobia is overwhelming. The woman thinks about trying to talk to the man, but she thinks better of encouraging he who is probably her abductor, and this feeling is only reinforced as she notices him put his hand down his pants.

            The man notices his hand and removes it immediately, hoping this beautiful woman didn’t see his depravity, and he thinks of trying to talk to her, but he decides against it, figuring a girl as pretty as her would never have time for a nice guy like him. She’s dressed like such a slut, he thinks, she’s practically asking for...

            “Hey, would you turn on the radio?”

            “Uh, yeah, uh... sure.” He fiddles with the dial until music begins to play.

            “Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuttin ta fuck wit! Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuttin ta fuck wit! Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nuttin...” And then, without touching the dial or the song finding its end, “She... wore blue... velvet... Bluer than velvet was the night... Softer than satin... And now we’re back to our main feature of the night, an interview with acclaimed author and world renowned child psychologist, Charles Manson! *Live audience claps appreciatively*

            ‘Mr. Manson, it’s great to have you with us tonight! I’m a huge fan of your work, particularly the Sharon Tate murder...’

            ‘Oh, really? You’re such a dear, I’m simply flattered. Now I have a special treat for you tonight- how would you like to help me re-enact that famous killing?’

            ‘I... I’d just love to!’ *Live audience cheers*... Its the cars... and the clubs... And the drinks and the girls and the drugs... I get lost in the life... I get lost in these Miami nights!” Then the radio slips into a fuzzy static.

            The road never finds its end and its beginning is long forgotten, lost in the primordial soup concealed in the fog behind them, and the night never ends for, if the night is to end we must have sun, and this is a land without sun, and the two drive for days and days without gap in the fog or landmark on the roadside.

            Eventually, after a time such that a hundred generations of fruit flies have born, lived, and died, the two find themselves in front of a roadside danner, tin sides, out of an old movie, big neon sign spelling out “End of the Liner.” This is a pun. Because it should be “end of the line,” but it’s a diner, so it’s “liner.” The joke works better written down.

            The woman heads inside, and, after a moment of hesitation, after the hell of their last stop, the man follows, watching her ass sway as she moves. The inside of the diner is as normal as the exterior, though the only people there are a single waitress standing behind the counter and, in the back, a chef. The two look at the menu and see a half dozen dishes more suited to a Michelin starred French restaurant then a roadside diner.

            “What’s with this menu?” The woman furrows her nose.

            “That Gaston! He’s such a character! He used to be a chef at the most expensive restaurant in Paris but then, one day, he came in here. He liked the look of the old End of the Liner, I guess, so he cut the cock off the old cook, fed it to him, then slit his throat! What a card!”

            “Uh...”

            “But trust me, his cooking’s nothing to laugh at. Best food in the world!” They order, then take a seat in a booth by the window. The woman excuses herself to use the toilet. The toilet lies down a long, underlit, chrome tinted hallway, and she takes her time because the red tile floor looks slippery, and with every step she feels as though her feet are going to betray her, and she’s going to crack her skull open, but she reaches the hallway’s end unharmed.

            The woman’s toilet is sparkling, immaculate, hung with the scent of violet and rose petals. There is even a bathroom attendant, handing out big, fluffy towels. The attendant speaks in a sultry, Edith Piaf voice, volume little more than a murmur.

            “Inside that stall...” she gestures with one, elegant arm “is a passage to hell.” So the woman, her curiosity piqued, walks into the indicated stall and finds, indeed, instead of a toilet, a deep hole, walls made of wet mud, with a rusted ladder leading down into the depths, one solitary oil lamp hung fifty feet below. She begins the climb downward, stopping only briefly to consider whether her food might get cold if she goes to hell before she eats, but figures that French food is often served cold anyway.

            As she climbs down, a foul odor, that of warmed over shit, creeps up around her, and the air gets horribly humid, the passage clouded with a noxious yellow mist, but at the bottom, the air is clear, and the woman walks forward, down a brightly lit rock corridor, and finds that, if this is hell, it is a little bit underwhelming.

            Finally, after walking for a few days, she finds herself in a great room, the ceiling a mile up, the back wall beyond her sight line, and, in this great emptiness, there stands one man.

            “Are you the devil?”

            “No. I’m God. The devil is dead.” And then she hears a million billion souls crying out in anguish, and suddenly the empty space is full of bodies uncountable, broken and beaten and battered, all crying out, and one lies close to her, and it looks up at her, and she sees that one of its eyes is missing, and the other is turned to liquid, and all its fingers are bloody stumps, and where once it had genitals now all it has is a bloody cavity surrounded by pubic hair, and it speaks in the voice of a theremin.

            “The devil was a pretty decent guy. This place was all free sex, good drugs, cheap booze, you know? 24/7 party. Then that dick God took over, and, well, you can see what happened then.”

            The woman turns around and sees another passage behind her. She begins walking, and, within a few moments, she finds herself walking back through the front door of the diner. As she sits down across from the man, the waitress brings them their food, two beautiful steaks, cooked to a perfect pinkish-red. As the woman is chewing her last bite, she finds a human ear in her mouth, but she doesn’t mind, the steak was well prepared.

            As the man pays for the meal, he talks to the waitress.

            “I think we may be lost - do you have a map, or maybe a telephone we could use?”

            “Sorry, no, that joker Gaston, he cooked the map in butter! HAHAHA! And we don’t have a phone.”

            “Do you know somewhere that might?”

            “A little ways down the road there is a whore house, I think they still have a phone.”

            “How far is a little ways?”

            “A little ways.”

            Back on the highway, the two drive in silence, until, after a few minutes, the fog to their right drops away, and they find themselves driving alongside a dark, vast sea. Then, out of the darkness, a few miles away from shore, rises up a great industrial superstructure, covered in bright lights, up on giant legs, an oil platform the size of a small city. But then they see great flames a thousand feet high rising up from the thing’s deck, and the fire is so bright that they must turn away.

            They drive for days, and still though, there is no sign of the whore house.

            “Why don’t you try the radio again?”

            So the man does.

            “‘So what’s the deal with airplane food, eh? I mean, really, people bitch and moan about airplane food, but, Jesus, think about all the people on earth who are starving to death! Everytime I fly, I think how much better off I’d be if I’d just stop eating and let myself die, stop being such a burden to all the people who pretend to love me!’ *The audience erupts in uproarious laughter* ‘But seriously, guys, you come here, and you listen to me complain about my life, tell you how depressed I am, how much I wish I was dead, how much I want to shoot my wife, strangle my infant son, and you come, and you just laugh, haha, and’” The man sounds as if he’s about to cry. “‘And you just laugh and laugh, and you never, just put me out of my misery. I wish, just once, one of you would come up here on stage, and blow my brains out.’ *The audience starts laughing, and they don’t stop until the end times*... Do you ever feel... like a plastic bag... Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin... Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?” The song cuts out.

            “Hey, I liked that song.”

            “I didn’t touch it.”

            “Okay.”

            They drive. For a while. As before, though, eventually they see the lights cutting up from the fog, a bright, hallucinogenic glow. The woman pulls off the highway, and they look up at it, huge, a dozen stories high, and as long and wide as it is tall. The sign reads “Fuck for money. Big tits. Big dicks. Your choice.” As they get out of the car, they notice that where once they were young, now their faces are deeply lined and wrinkled, their hair gone grey, tits and stomachs stretched and sagging.

            Inside, an impossibly obese woman sits at a reception desk completely naked, her breasts the size of the man’s head.

            “Do you have a map, or a phone?” The man asks, as he tries to avoid staring.

            “Yeah honey, just through those doors.” She points to two huge double doors off to her side, easily twenty feet tall. “Just go through there, and you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

            “Thanks.” The two walk through the doors together, and out the other side apart.

            The woman finds herself in a seemingly endless velvet padded corridor, the loss of her companion not noticed. She pads down the hallway, and passes on either side of her doors, and from behind the doors she hears sounds of ecstasy and wet flesh smacking into wet flesh. She hears footsteps behind her, and turns to see a man with long greasy hair, shirtless, arms rippling with muscle. As she stops, so does he, then, as she begins to walk again, he follows, never increasing his distance but never falling back. She tries to talk to him, but he only looks at her. She walks for an age eternal, and she feels her own bones turning to dust within her, then, finally she reaches a door at the end of the hall. It is labeled “The Truth.” She opens it and goes inside.

            The man finds himself in a seemingly endless concrete corridor, the loss of his companion unnoticed. He walks down the corridor, the sounds of his feet echoing about him through the concrete. The walls are hung with pipes every so often, steam jetting off here and there, a horror movie maintenance tunnel. He turns to look at one of the pipes, and, when he looks forward again, there is a woman in front of him, tall and beautiful, long dark hair, tanned legs falling down under a short summer dress. She turns and looks at him, then keeps walking. He follows her, but is afraid to get closer. He tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t respond. He walks for a long time, and he feels his heart’s ticking begin to slow, until, finally, they reach the end of the corridor. The woman opens it and walks through, shutting it behind her. He reaches it and it reads “The Truth.” He follows her in.

                                    The man and the woman, bodies young and unblemished, drive the vintage Chevy Malibu through the fog, a great obfuscating body stretched out a million miles fore and aft the muscle car, they an old pirate ship rolling across the ocean waves, searching out its quarry through the endless, its very soul extant only in the mind’s ether, just another dream of a past created to assuage the priceless insecurity of the present.

            “Where the hell are we?” The man rubs his hands together as he asks.

            “I thought you knew.”

            “How would I know?”