Fastback | Alexander T. Damle

            I ride hard across the desert, blue sky, sands stretch away side to side, crackle rumble snap engine beneath me roils quietly. I wear all black and man doesn’t know what to call me when I pass, and on my hip I wear a gun and it is black and the motorcycle beneath me, sleek lines, is black and I am the figure in black and in mythos biblical and fantastic you know what to call me, but on seeing me you still forget my name. I ride and you don’t know I’m coming but soon you will and then I will become juggernaut, as changing of blue skies to slate grey as storm descends, as birth of fawn and budding of wildflower in springtime. And I am pursued across empty earth endless by forces who I do not understand, and that which I do not understand, you can never even hope to know, and so on I go.

            The man turns on his signal and merges into the left hand lane, rests the crook of his elbow out the open window, feels the desert winds blowing by as he presses in with his right foot, feels his 67’ Mustang Fastback edge up past 90, passing trucks in the far right lane, the middle practically empty, this time of night. City sets behind him and in front of him sets not much, the city illuminated bright a conflagration against some kind of emptiness, air here on the highway almost clean but for scent of motor oil. He abandons the city fast as he can, pursued (or so he feels) by forces whose names he does not know but whose faces and voices and eyes stick in his head, though he wishes to remove them forever, rip out brain matter with spoon and sup on it (he wonders if this is to what that old phrase “eat your heart out” refers).

            He remembers the meal he just ate and the drinks he just drank. He remembers that a bit of chicken bone got caught in his teeth and when he pulled it from his lips, all he could do was stare at it, so he stared at it, and the woman across from him stared at him, her eyes flickering slightly in the low light, blue-gold flecks, but he was more interested in the chicken bone than her eyes, and after a few moments staring at the bone she cast her eyes down, and he frowned and she asked him what troubled his heart such, and he said it didn’t matter, then she touched his hand and her hand was warm and soft against his, and then shortly they returned to normal conversation, but he can’t remember one word of what they said.

            They said their goodnights under the street lights, standing before his Mustang, and he kept catching her face reflecting in the hood, couldn’t look into her eyes tonight for some reason, but the reflection of them entranced him. Remembers something or another Pamuk once wrote about reflections being more beautiful than their reality. Thinks it’s bullshit, but can’t keep his eyes off the hood of the car. Sees speedometer edge past 100, slows down slightly. And then she touched him on the shoulder and that touch always had a power over him. He remembers back to when they started dating months ago and he got worried he was falling in love with her. Then she disappeared for a few weeks, and when she came back, all apologies, he found he barely could put in the thought to take her out for drinks every so often. When she touched his shoulder, he looked up at her, and she leaned in and they kissed and it was nice. Taste lingers on his lips and tongue, but it doesn’t matter.

            He sees the rear lights of a car in his lane a couple miles down the highway, can see forever any light out here, most of all the stars, but he sees now only the lights of the car ahead of him, so he shifts over to the middle lane gently with turn signal and brakes and slides in, before pushing hard on the accelerator again and rocketing past the car, and for some reason he looks over at the driver as he passes. The face he sees he can’t reconcile as a face, and is instead but a mask, and he sees the same mask when he looks in his rearview mirror, as he prepares to shift back into the left lane when the other car is behind him, then he shifts into the left lane.

            He resents her, the woman, he knows he does, as much as he cares for her, as much as he finds her beautiful and charming and funny, he resents her, not for her, but for the way she seems to find him somehow special, and that’s just not something he can abide. He’s not a character in a motion picture.

            When he was a kid he once had tea at his grandmother’s house and he accidentally dropped one of her old tea cups, and when it hit the hardwood floor it shattered and pieces shot everywhere and he was terrified, but his grandmother assured him it didn’t matter and told him it was old and there were always more tea cups, and accidents happen.

            She thinks he’s something worth her having and he knows he’s not really, no one really is, and when they first started dating, he thought she was the most incredible thing in the world, beautiful and strong and perfect, and in her he saw someone he could be true around. Then he realized every interaction with her, every word he spoke to her, held in it a lie inherent, and then he realized that around her he wasn’t him. He began to notice the way he changed his cadences, forced a smile to his face, tempered his moods and his eccentricities, tailored his politics, all to please her. He wishes she would leave him because he can’t muster the will to admit he doesn’t want her, because he cares about her too much to recognize what he knows.

He turns on the radio as he approaches his exit, twenty miles still to go, these unlit other than by his headlights, then home at end of unmarked road, and the radio (signal weakened by distance, though no mountains for an eternity), crackles out something about blood. 

           

            I slow down the bike and I get off of it, stand my full height, notice shadow left across parking lot by sun just beginning its descent towards night, leave helmet on (colour stated), check gun’s position on my hip (Desert Eagle .50, black as wings of a Raven), and stroll through doors, easy, calm. The clerk sees me and her eyes go out of the light and she sees the gun and the gun doesn’t matter, not around here, lots of guns, but it’s the figure and she can’t tell what I am but she knows she’s seen me before and she knows this is the last time she will see me. I remove the gun from its holster, cup it in my two hands, and, without much thought, pull the trigger, and watch her brains run like worms running from approaching rain across the liquor bottles behind her. I turn and see a man running out of the back of the shop, and I pivot my body, cut him down with two quick shots to the chest, and the blood lays itself out across the tile floor and his body crashes downwards, like in a cartoon when the legs keep running though the cliff’s edge has already been passed, and his skull crunches as his head lands in his own blood. I walk out of the store, re-holstering the gun. The sun shines directly through the face shield of the helmet into my eyes, and I know I stand in the sun and yet the forces are always at my back, so I remount my bike, and down the road I continue.

            He wakes up and looks out the window at the desert, the clouds scorched purple and red coming home late from a bar fight, Saguaro shadows cast long over the desert onto which his house was dropped at seeming random, early morning sun falling over Mexican poppies, they surrounding prickly pear, newly bloomed for spring. He catches sight briefly, before it passes into shadow, of a coyote dragging its prey, bleeding still and just done kicking, and for a second he thinks it's a kid, before he sees that it’s just a rabbit.

            Then he does his morning fixings, showers, pulls on a shirt and jeans, makes a bowl of oatmeal, eats it. He doesn’t remember it because he’s done it so often. It’s not that he favors the flavor of the thing, it’s just easy, comfortable, reassuring that some bottom on his life can’t drop out from under him. What bottom though? Life is good and life is easy so they tell him, as he swigs down a Prozac with his black coffee and watches his vision swim slightly, reminds him of a lake somewhere in the Northern Rockies, set beside his grandfather, dead now, caught a fish that day, went back to their cabin, cooked it. He doesn’t remember killing the fish and he wishes he did, but he doesn’t know why.

            After breakfast he puts on a pair of sunglasses to go for a walk around his property and have a think about the woman and what to do about the woman and what to do about him. He thinks of maybe just packing his bags and leaving, not tell anyone, not the woman, not the waiter down at the diner in town he always flirts with, James, he thinks, or maybe Jim, or Frank, or... something, not his bartender, not... well, those are really the only three people he could tell, but he’d leave and not tell them. Go somewhere always greener, in high summer, in late autumn, in dead winter, as green as the desert in lucid climax of spring, somewhere with ancient temples tucked into verdant mountain valleys, with men in long robes who’d tell him how to live his life, or maybe down straight south, see Chile, always wanted to see Chile, or maybe just wander forever. He has the money. Didn’t expect it, the inheritance, but when he got it, all he could think to do was go away somewhere quiet, leave city madness behind, across a forgotten sea, so he fell headlong into the desert, and now he’s here.

            Sand kicks up about his boots, blows in amongst the wildflowers, just beginning to show their colours. Across a rock pockmarked by wind and time lies a bull snake, sunning itself in the early morning heat, and the man stands watching it, languorous and ignoble, living to live and dying whenever. The man thinks of what he left and why he left and he thinks of how desperately alone he always feels, and no, it’s not like that, not like that online dating loneliness, not that stand in corners of parties alone loneliness, no, it’s something deeper, something that cuts closer the nearer he finds himself to others. He remembers the taste of something sweet and slightly salty on the woman’s tongue, and that thought just makes him feel most alone of all.

He’s thought about it, thought about this being alone, and he thinks maybe when he was younger he expected that if only he reached out to other people, he’d find a race warm and kind and receptive, and even when he was a little older, and at his angriest (dirty Nirvana t-shirt, long hair, Lana Del Rey blasting through headphones), he kind of figured people were just all assholes, and he was just better than them. The problem, he realized, once he began reaching out to people, is that everyone is as lonely and scared and tired and depressed and fundamentally decent as he is, they’re just all so much better at hiding it, and so that loneliness is all he can ever feel, even when he holds the body of another to his and feels their heartbeat and the way each breath causes their entire body to quiver a little, even when a beautiful woman traces abstract symbols on his bare thigh, as if trying to calculate out the meaning of it all, in that intimate post-coital moment, even when she tells him he’s the only thing that matters to her anymore, even, especially, always, lonely, empty, alone.

            Then the bull snake stirs from its slumber, and slithers off the rock, through the sand, right in front of the man’s path, and he doesn’t step back, but simply stares. Not venomous, but mean as hell. He watches the snake trail off through the sand under the hot sun, and he wonders if it knows someday it is going to die, whether it has ever felt love or passion or care or anything at all, then he wonders if he has either, and considers that perhaps all he’s ever felt is a deep unease, a sense of a world crashing down about his shoulders.

            Then he sees the snake strike out for a rabbit (dropping like flies this morning), grab onto it with its teeth, then slowly wrap its coils around the thing’s body, holds on tight, and he thinks of putting his arms around a woman, wonders if the feeling is at all similar, as the mouse’s frantic yammering and flutterings slow, as the coils tighten and blood flow ceases, cutting off the brain and heart and then, eventually, with one final twitch, the soul, and then the man walks on, because watching a snake eat is far less fascinating than watching a snake hunt.

            I push my motorcycle up through the gears, speedometer well past 130 now, as the world slides off into incoherence all around me, twitching my body ever so slightly, ever so rarely for those still travelling these roads, trucks lonely going from nowhere to nowhere, occasional family roadtrip, kids trapped inside a falling elevator, straight to hell. And then after a while or a bit or forever or never I stop my bike and walk into a diner and I keep my helmet on, and the woman in front asks me where I’d like to sit, so I tell her a booth by the window and she leads me to my seat and I order a slice of pie and a coffee and she looks at me a little strange, so I take my helmet off and she sees my face and reads my eyes (one of those always says she can know everything about someone from their eyes) but she can’t read anything from my eyes and it doesn’t matter anyway. She brings me my pie and my coffee and I drink my coffee with four sugars and cream and eat my pie with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream, and both taste good and both are refreshing. Then the woman comes up to me and gives me the bill and I pay her and I leave. Then I ride further down the highway. I stop at a gas station and park my bike by a pump and I fill the tank, then I walk inside, pull out the gun, shoot the clerk twice, blowing out his knees, leaving him to bleed out (.50 round should mean that won’t take too long), then I look at a few other patrons scattered around the store and shoot each of them carefully in the chest, then clean a bit of blood and brain matter from my helmet with the help of a bottle of water that I take from a cooler next to the door. Then I get back on the road and keep riding.

            The man drives through the desert and, without warning, he finds himself in town, the only town left out here, windswept and rotting, cars rusted, windows boarded over, people, what few there are, backs hunched, eyes cast down. First time he came here with this car, everyone stared, Christ come home from the desert, but now he’s passed into their reference frame as all the rest, just another old man (old woman old car old dog old country) whiling away the futile final moments before inevitable death. He parks the Fastback on the street in front of a diner that couldn’t look more like a cliche if Norman Rockwell had himself designed its every inch. The man wanders inside and smiles at the waiter who he is going to flirt with and who is going to watch the man as he leaves and consider asking the man if he wants to grab a drink later, but instead, being of this town, he will probably instead just go home and jerk off like he does every night (passing time until...). The man sits down at his usual table by the window and looks outside.

            A tumbleweed floats listlessly down the main street, and all the man can do is laugh, as a traffic light blinks red to indicate it is out. It’s been out for months. The man keeps looking out the window, half expecting a starved dog to drag its bloated corpse surrounded by a maelstrom of flies, flecking off specks of dried blood, through the street, completing the tumble weed image, but no dog appears.

            Waiter comes up next to him and looks at him, and the man turns to the waiter and tells the waiter the usual, then drifts his eyes back out the window, not in the mood for conversation. The man wonders if it will rain today and this is the only thought he can find to occupy his mind as he stares out the window.

            A cloud passes in front of the sun, and shadows fall across the diner. The waiter brings the man huevos rancheros, green chili, a budweiser. The usual. The man thanks him. Back outside there is nothing and the town is silent, though it is just past noon on a Sunday. Church closed. Always a bad sign, the church closing, the man thinks. It’s not about belief in God, that doesn’t trouble him. In fact, he doesn’t particularly care either way. What concerns him is something far more deeply gone indicated by the closing of a church.

Something seems always to be coming, some spectre over the endless horizon, but nothing ever appears. So he’s here still, another Sunday passed in this diner, another Saturday dinner up in the city with the woman. She asked him to come back to her apartment, but he said no, said he ought to be getting home.

            He wonders why she still puts up with him, his distance, his incoherence, his disinterest. But then remembers she’s as alone as he is. He wishes he was the bull snake. He wishes he was the rabbit ensnared in the bull snake's coils.

            And then from some distance comes a great rumbling, and the man looks up and the waiter looks out and from in back out comes the cook. No great rumblings left, not like this. They know it's not thunder but they don’t know how they know it’s not thunder and they don’t know what it is.

            The man thinks, as the noise rises, of a car crash he once came along in a rainstorm on the highway leading from the city. He stopped as a dozen cars whipped by, not a matter of greater humanity, simply closer observation. A car had smashed into the concrete barrier on the road’s edge, and the driver had been pitched onto the car’s hood, surrounded by blood, covered all in blood. And in the back seat there was a child, its knees pressed up into its chest where the car crumpled in. The man looked at the child, and in its eyes he saw something that he’s never forgotten but he doesn’t know what it was. He told the kid it was going to be okay, but then he noticed the kid’s shirt was sopped with blood. He couldn’t see the wound, but the kid was shaking, and the man kept trying to reassure the kid but the kid didn’t say anything, he just shook and kept giving the man that look. The man called for an ambulance, but he knew somehow it would be too late, and he tried to flag down other cars, but most of them just ignored him. And then he went back to the kid and the kid just looked at him, and the man didn’t know what to do. Eventually another car stopped and the woman who got out said she was a doctor. The man sat like the kid had been sitting, only he was holding his knees to his chest rather than the car, and he didn’t half look at the woman, and the kid was dead.

            Then the rumbling reveals itself and down the street of the town I ride, and the man looks out at my figure all in black, and I remind him of the look in the kid’s eyes. And then events repeat themselves, and I dismount my bike, and I walk up to the door of the diner, and a little bell rings as I walk in. The waiter forces a smile and welcomes me. The man just stares. Then I take the gun from my hip and I, without pause, shoot the waiter in the chest, and he falls down almost clumsily, and kind of looks at his chest, and the blood rushing from it, and he dies. Then I shoot the cook who has started to run for the back, and I shoot him in the back, and he kind of flies forward with the extra momentum, and his body falls against the door to the kitchen, and it opens with the weight. Then I turn to the man, and he’s standing there pointing a 1911 at me, and I stare back, and I move my weapon to him, but he shoots me. The force of the bullet spins me around a little bit, and my left shoulder feels heavy, so I turn back in one motion and shoot him three times with the gun held in my right hand. He gets blood everywhere. I walk out the door and get back on my bike and ride away. 

No Stars Here | Alexander T. Damle

“Thin line between heaven and here.” - Bubbles

            Junkie strung out wanders between shadows down cast flat windows looking below light shone through empty night quiet night holy night and through the windows the kid sits eyes locked held in cornea stretched out neon dream fever death internet repeat empty arms inflated veins addict click click. Click hammer back addict brain pan de-mapped (quoting bible of addict writing, DFW south side Boston). Light cast glowing not just junkie but kid too screen light not night light entranced addict. Inside behind cornea there is passageway and its ceiling is gone and full instead of stars but down it is infinite and so many doors all locked so just forwards and down it at its end (white wallpaper grey carpet stainless) is a door marked “Janitorial Supplies” and the man his fingers half melted cleaning bleach hair gone grey though just 37 stress exhaustion pushes the broom down hallway of high school, empty corridors (night, night, goodnight) cleaning up shit fucking high schoolers wishes he was still them, different choices, going to go home and be alone and eat his microwave dinner (mac and cheese noodles stuck together, cheese congealed, Diet Coke, AA ten years now gone clean but still) addict to his own pain now, tearing up the walls, dry wall dry eyes screaming to God forgotten, and then back each day to the high school grind, passes kid in all black sitting back to the wall. And the kid sits on a tablet and it ran out of power in third period but he needs something in front of him can’t look out be out can’t talk or look or see or be seen and the blank screen before his eyes reflects his eyes, sepulchre, wishes to be an addict because he wants to know how it feels to love and to need and mostly to care for something be it even the addicted to object and he stares hard at the screen stares

            through

the screen black and reflective reflexive wishes he could vanish into the screen and then he sees bare legs walk above the screen and hears voice slightly smoked and it lilts and he thinks if only if only but the legs have a body and the body has a mind and a face and eyes that see and fall too into screens. And the mind is the body though the body is all that’s seen the mind ignored and she wishes she could see and she sees the boy in black and though the two think neither would dare enter the other’s world, in the other’s world is all that could exist. This not lust, lust too caring, too much emotion of the addict, but instead another world out of finding walls in own bare and all black and reflective and all blank screens and the mind attached to the body attached to the legs speaks the pretty words thought expected of it and giggles slightly and laughs gaily and the mind feels the body walking along next to it must surely lack a mind for the vapid words issued forth from body’s lips, no true thought, to simply exist, without reflection or pain, but the mind thinks at least though she is empty and all within is reflective, at least she has the gift of something within, even if it does lead all to simply Dostoevsky, adj. but even the body next to the mind has itself a mind, though its internal struggle different, thought process much the same.

            And the tragedy of it all is if only the mind was attached to the lips and the lips to the body and the truth to the thought to the soul to the posture to the short skirt to the combat boots to the black trenchcoat to the lip gloss to the football jersey to the torn jeans to the patched up jacket stunk of old nicotine and urine and the bathrobe if only if only all could see equal and level and each the mind separated not from lips and if only if only.

            Once upon a time in a kingdom far away across a distant sea a young man and a young woman met each other's eyes across a table and beers and warm summer night every night summer palm trees tropics,

            Demerol dreams summer nights cold nights no summer here just slate grey skies and inside room colder heater out junkie. Addict. Own pain self pain self hurt hospital release form notes left scattered around house for police, family, friends, have to find them all, toys in a cereal box, first day home from hospital house as empty as before made attempt to leave, razor left on floor, fucking cops in this town grey walls scratch out your eyes rip out your throat tear out your veins shoot up drop drink TV on 24/7 click click (hammer back) socially approved out but not the razor, this met with interment for life is precious life thrown away most of all. Live!

            Live from New York it’s! It’s! It’s... it’s... its... it... I... not another re-run. Click (Click click click click click click click click bam... click)

            Live from Mogadishu its real life! Death life flickering half-channel analog receiver life death grey white black snippet snicket of moving picture ending picture sounds from outer space and you hear a voice whisper through the static and through the haze “wake up” but you’re already awake aren’t you?

            Eyes crack open through that nasty stuff your eyes have to crack open through sleep too long is it dark out already or still or are you woken up at all because outside there are no stars but there are no stars here, too bright, too many clouds, buildings too tall, stars too far, hand scrambling spider for phone click on screen notifications dopamine bump parents landlord power company parents parents grandma parents landlord facebook! But no wait just another birthday.

            Candles chocolate ice cream cake lawn is green sky is blue sun is yellow balloons are red memories are but spectres of might have beens.

            (a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z hamster in a cage, tiny desks, teacher’s desk #1 Teacher coffee stains, mug tipped over, blood slick tile floor, memories but not your memories but memories made fragile click click [bang bang bangbangbang twenty seven dead] memories can’t be true and can’t be kind because images are, in our great Gibson-granted future supplantabled between the static and replaced and the ideal is lost and replaced with the truth)

            addict

            Homeless man, hair fallen out, hands cut shattered broken, ink just below left thumb and cop recognizes it from somewhere, lying cold piss frozen vomit shit stains no pulse, and people walk by and stare dead ahead, and last night pulse fading, clicking out, homeless man begs quietly for help 3am, on way home from club look down and grimace just keep on walking and one notes to another how pathetic, weak, pathetic, broken, and one girl pauses at cries for help and shivering quaking frail body but then sees tear in jacket far too thin for night this cold needle marks patinaed across deflated veins so she walks on, so he died to laughing voices and this morning one of those who laughed now walks past body and remembers night-cry for help and this one won’t sleep tonight even as girl caught in small of his arm sleeps soundly next to him, chest rising, falling gently and he thinks of telling her but he’s forgotten the word for death and he stays up alone staring out the window looking for stars but there are no stars here.

            At night lying in the gutter is a baby’s rattle and in the gutter there is washed up trash and collected refuse and half of a shattered bottle of Jack Daniels lies up the street from the gutter and it’s shattered perfectly halfway no jagged edges, perfect line, and it looks like it was intentional but it wasn’t and a dark trail reflects neon on the asphalt leading from the bottle towards the gutter and someone looks at the bottle and thinks of picking it up, so particular in its destruction, but then sees the other half of the bottle and loses interest in both halves and goes home and watches TV and eats dinner (home cooked, not great, but edible) then goes to bed alone and he falls asleep with a smile on his lips remembering something that he remembers wrong.

            Red eyes eyes down down beat beat off off key key coke. Red eyes.

            Bass strong vig light night heavy club empty chamber full.

            Then empty and body cavity full and eyes empty and head loaded (last trip, DMT not drug of choice but choice ain’t got nothing to do with it)

            Razor blade cyanide revolver barrel (once heard chest better than head more certainty though too more pain but that DMT trip never could score it might as well take it while he’s got it) heights, depths, didn’t leave a note, unless they searched the dumpster (crumpled up tossed off way out).

            When her heart stopped they brought her back but they didn’t bring her all the way back and now she’s here legs and body and brain, and now the brain really is cut off and the lips instead of “hey, like, what’s up” now go all “blip blip blip” and her mom cries and her dad left and he drinks now and used to never drink at all and now all he does is drink and the boy still sits in black in the hallway and he heard something about it but he doesn’t connect it to the legs because honestly he’s forgotten the legs and by the time the brain connected to the legs had its heart shut down it had forgotten about the boy in black too though now with only time to think and every thought to think and no words to speak the brain thinks of everything and she thinks of the boy and wonders if he can see the stars from wherever he is because her eyes still work and she can only see tile ceiling, every day for the rest of always. k.

The Good Fight | Theland E.Thomas

We find our young hero kneeling in the ashes of his smoldering home, desperately grasping for his father’s charred hand, causing it to disintegrate and scatter in the wind. That same wind lifts the tears from the boy’s cheeks and carries the boy’ screams through the remains of the ravaged village, over the bloodied bodies of his family and friends. Those screams, the cries of innocence shattered, dreams crushed, identity torn away. That day, heartbroken but resolute, our hero vows to seek out evil anywhere it may hide and to destroy it.

Cold and alone, he travels to a neighboring village. They take him in, treat him as their own. There, he learns and trains. He develops strength, speed, and ferocity. He holds anger and passion, but lacks wisdom and discernment. Heartstrong and headstrong, he presses on until his skill surpasses that of his master. And when the invaders come, he rises up to lead an army.

No longer a child, our hero and his men charges headlong into enemy forces though they are outnumbered ten-to-one. But the village has trained their men well, and each warrior fights with the strength of ten men. And our hero is the bravest of them all. He moves like a man possessed, spinning and splashing, anticipating the enemy’s every move. How courageous he is, how fearless, how gallant. Through the roars, blood, smoke, and clanging, our hero emerges victorious.

The village celebrates with a feast in his honor. To commemorate his valiance, they dub him, the Righteous Warrior, prophesying that he will wield Justice in his hands and leave Peace and Prosperity in his wake.

The next day, our hero begins his Righteous campaign. With a band of brothers in arms, he goes out to destroy the enemies where they lay. They traverse the mountains and the plains tirelessly until they reach the City. Oh, the magnificent City, that bastion of evil, that malignant sore upon the earth. Cursed by God and man, the ulcer cowers behind sky high walls, spewing forth gold-adorned wretchedness from the bowels of Hell. All night, the City revels for they have nothing to fear.

The Righteous Army strikes then, shooting down the watchers, blasting through the walls. They set fire to the dwellings and ransack the mercantile streets. They strike down the messengers and advance upon the castle where the drunken soldiers scramble for their weapons. Our Righteous Warrior searches the castle until he finds the dastardly emperor and brings down Justice for every one of his villagers slaughtered.

From then on, our Righteous hero rules the empire with Justice by his side. He brings Peace and Prosperity to the land. No longer bowed under the burden of oppression, the empire flourishes and expands. What marvelous Peace, what joyful Prosperity Justice brings! All doers of evil and workers of inequity tremble in Fear at the mention of Righteous Justice.

But our Righteous hero stirs in his sleep and awakens from nightmares at the thought of evil gathering in the shadows and corruption festering within. He seeks to eradicate evil where it may be found and to excise corruption from humankind. And thus, he wages war upon evil itself. Oh, how singing turns to mourning, how laughing turns to weeping, how dancing turns to marching. Peace dies and Prosperity withers when Justice becomes Perversion.

Our hero fights his Righteous battle, but the evil multiplies everywhere he looks. It eludes him, vanishing in one place and appearing in another. It shapeshifts and transmutes. Here, a foreigner, there a friend. Here, a fugitive, there a family. All sought out, all destroyed, all eradicated, all brought to justice in blood, blood, blood, blood.

Still our hero is troubled. Still he cannot sleep for he knows that some pocket of evil still remains. After scouring the ends of the earth, our hero realizes that the ultimate Evil, the ultimate, Corruption, lies within himself. His looks to see his hands dripping blood down his throne, and he realizes he reigns with Perversion by his side.

Solemnly, our Righteous hero wields Justice one last time.

People Don't Fall in Love Like they do in the Movies | Alexander T. Damle

Encounter

            Though thy soul speaks loud into the deep empty night to those stars around immediate you lie usually silent for want of words somehow fitting, they shine bright and yet you’re all burnt out, used up, tossed off, crumpled fast food wrapper.

            Late at night having an emotional break down and you can’t sleep because you don’t sleep so you scream at the walls and blast sad music whose singers you fall in love with because the voices you can talk to because you don’t have to worry about them talking back and they say the voices are all in your head but that doesn’t mean they don’t scream too and sometimes you have to tell the voices to fuck off and you know that’s a bad sign but all you have now is bad signs.

            And yet her you’re talking to and it’s easy, and she’s not like the voices, she doesn’t make you want to curl up into a ball in the corner and pound your head against the wall and take a long knife and cut your arms and you’re talking to her and it’s easy.

            On that first night the voices for some reason lay silent, and you used to think and sometimes still think that the voices are your voice too, and without them never would you have anything to say, and yet that night you spoke loud and you had something to say without having to think what you’re supposed to say.

            And she was so beautiful but you didn’t notice, you didn’t notice she was laughing at your jokes, that she seemed to actually take an interest and it was good and that was the last time it was easy but not the last time it was good.

            A galleon is pitched heavy long across the waves as above stars shine bright for want of lights to drown them out, and the moon hangs in gentle crescent, and somewhere below deck the captain sits, feather to page, his words stretched out and hung all lackadaisical, and he spent as much time making the woman’s name look beautiful at page’s top as he did in crafting all the words lain below.

            Worthless, your words are worthless, you type like it matters, like it will be read, all is nought but cliche, and that goes for the world too.

            Gas fires light the Texas night.

            A girl sketches out on Oxy on backstreet of Tangiers.

            Could use a drink.

            After you talked to her you went home and when you did the voices came back and this time you couldn’t block them out and they screamed and screamed and screamed, and you begged and you pleaded and they didn’t listen.

            Keep on.

            Persevere.

            The ship captain now guides his ship cutting through waves threaten to engulf even the stars, and yet he does not bow and he does not break and somewhere below deck, a bottle of ink is overturned onto a stack of papers and all is obscured.

            After much consternation on the subject, you ask her to an old movie and you regret it immediately.

Motion Picture

            Don’t you have a different record to freak out to? Another record to sit with your eyes hanging all Basset Hound, fingers missing keystrokes, tired but cannot sleep, bowed but never breaking? Somehow you believe that having old voices sympathetic, carried on from a you you thought you ended makes it easier.

            Nothing makes it easier, bullet worming between ear and temple excepted.

            The movie was a disaster because of course it was a disaster. Not for her, and not for us, but for me, because, well, that’s how I tend to make these things.

            Rival gangs/spy agencies/pick your trope line up across a bridge, snipers waiting in the rafters, right hands under leather jackets/peacoats, old Springsteen number beats out, then right at mid-bridge, kid drops the briefcase and everyone starts shooting everyone.

            Can’t scream because of sleeping bodies separated by cheap drywall, can hear everything, nothing for him to hear, not but shuddering gasping body singular at rest but restless, want to cry so bad but can’t cry, so hard to cry anymore.

            Into the cave the gondolier paddles, leaving night sky behind, world now enlightened only by single torch (oil burning) hung from front of gondola, cave walls, dappled with imperfections, hung with moss, can’t see into the water, too dark, going forwards the sky behind disappears too now and it’s just the gondolier and his gondola and the walls of the cave and inwards he keeps on because it has narrowed too tight to turn and he doesn’t like paddling backwards, too much work, so on he goes and around each pipe bend of cave walls he expects to find but never does and on and on the walls curve, minutes hours days weeks months years life till death, waking moment and sleep, always the cave.

            Used to be an artist, but now he just jerks off and rubs his jizzm onto the page, calls it art. No one can really tell much of a difference between the artist before and the husk now.

            Want to hurt like want to be high, want to pound fist into wall until blood flows liberally in vaguely tragic patterns reminiscent of 700 year old glass running down its own pane, want to shoot up, not as addiction, but affectation, all an affectation.

            Movie was David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, shown with intermission as intended by artist (without jizzm stains), used the toilet three times. Thought somehow this would be a deal breaker in her book. Afterwards rather than drinks she said she had to go home to do a secret santa with her flatmates and you walked home together and you didn’t even hug and she made some casual remark about getting drinks and you figured it was all just a line and you figured that was that, another first date without a second and

            I wish I could just set off across the American waste on the back of a motorcycle and maybe curve south, go through the other Americas, jungle and desert and mountain and plains and beaches and small towns and cities and all that out there and yet you’re here and maybe that’s good and things are good but they’re probably not.

            Evidence A. you’re listening to the record you listen to when things aren’t good, it itself a suicide note. You’ve never written a suicide note.

            Writing from the story’s middle, doesn’t work with true stories any better than it does with fiction but you have to write something you just have to write something because if you don’t write anything then you’re not a writer, isn’t that what you always say?

Boozing

            And yet despite previously told prophecies that was not the end, for drinks did happen, with time, and you drank and you talked, you both, long into the night, closing your favorite bar (only time you’ve ever done that) and that was also a good night but not a great night and so much you fucked up, opportunities lost, a woman like her, not going to wait around.

            Make your bets and make them well, poker face on.

            Trying to cry. Trying your best to cry but can’t cry. Need a dead lover to picture, some great personal tragedy to regret.

            Bourgeois self obsession made manifest on page and in mirror, more masturbation, pushups and pullups and sets and routines and protein shakes and health foods and calorie counts and carefully assembled outfits, and no one gives a shit but the one staring back forlornly in the mirror, all that preening and yet it’s never enough, face in the magazine stares up at you and it’s not your face because faces don’t work that way.

            And then she says she has something kind of awkward to tell you and this is the moment you were all kinds of braced for, yet just those words a part of you fractures a little and then she says she has a long distance open relationship and this you weren’t expecting, and it’s not the relationship, that doesn’t bother you, not really, you have enough potential deal breakers yourself that you have to accept whatever you get with any potential partners, after all, aren’t the years long self-hate that is the running conversations with the voices in your head close enough to an open relationship? What does bother you is even talking about a relationship, not ready for this, not even close, so used to girls going on first dates with you that they assume are just friendly meet-ups, then never talking to you again. You can’t even deal with the idea that a girl might be into you. Breaks you.

            After the date you know you should kiss her, but you don’t and you don’t even really consider it. Too drunk to think, too tired, too broken, used up, tired, this whole dating thing has fucked up too many times for you to even consider it going right this time.

A Return to the Land of Oz

            Then Christmas comes and you two go your parting ways, and you talk sporadically for those couple of weeks, and it eats you up inside and she mentions in your talk, just to clarify, that she is indeed single, and you say you’re single too and it takes her a couple days to get back to you, and in those couple of days everything hurts and you want to throw up and you can barely eat and you can’t sleep and you know it’s absurd, it’s just a few dates, you’re doing exactly what you shouldn’t do and you’re building it up way beyond anything reasonable, and you wish you’d get in a potentially lethal car crash.

            Icy roads, traded paint, twisted metal, smell of burnt breaks, flaming gasoline, snow coming down hard, half light, blood.

            You get back and you get drinks again, somewhere different, and it all feels wrong this time, and when you use the bathroom you stare at yourself and you ask yourself what you’re doing, and whether you actually care for this girl, if you aren’t just looking for something to fall in love with because you’re so fucking lonely, another excuse to not kill yourself for a couple more months.

            You walk home together again and you stand staring each other caught in the light of Edinburgh streetlamps, as a faint rain beats down, and you stare at each other, and she smiles, and you lean in then stop and it would be so easy but you don’t kiss her, and eventually she breaks the moment and kisses you on the cheek, then gives a little wave as she walks off, and that kiss and that wave melt your heart a little bit and you feel the moisture from her lips on your cheek as you walk up to your apartment.

            Then the kiss dries and all you can think about is that you didn’t kiss her and she’s going to lose interest, got to take a chance, too scared she’ll pull away and then you’ll wake up in hospital bed, all the events of the past few weeks just another overly hopeful pipe dream, an excuse to believe you can make yourself better.

            Mental patient howl. Beat the walls, bloody cement, bloody foam, bloody straightjacket, no drug strong enough to fix you quiet.

Late Late Nights

            You’re not a jealous person, and yet all you feel is jealous, when she so much as talks to another guy and you’ve only gone on a few dates.

You’re an absolute joke, you thought you’d changed? You thought you were ready for a relationship with this cool, funny, smart, outgoing, beautiful woman? You’re going to shatter her like China, like everything that ever makes the mistake of getting close to you by choice rather than circumstance.

            And yet you’re going out with her again tomorrow. Some people never learn.

To be continued.

The Parable of the Cogwheels | Alexander T. Damle

            One day Francis Grant McDonald woke up, though memory of going to asleep escaped him, and all about him he could hear a great low roar. When his eyes opened it was dark, black as pitch though not so black as that time he was locked in a windowless basement by his stepfather for three days, but too dark to see much, just the sound of that low roar, metallic, steel, glimmering steel against steel turning churning plates of steel against plates of steel, car crash nightblood.

            So he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light and he shifted around a bit because whatever he was lying on was cold and it hurt his back, bad back, football injury childhood cheerleaders lonely thought with the uniform he could fuck a cheerleader but then he realized he didn’t want to fuck a cheerleader and that was an awkward locker room conversation and then that day his own teammate ran him down on the field and it was just an accident (coach said, teammate said, saw eyes turn to him, body shift) but his back has been screwed up since then and now it’s giving him trouble then his eyes adjust.

            Above him the sound explains itself in giant gears the size of big men or small trees turning over and over about points of centre axis connected to seeming nothings, dripping occasionally with engine oil color of night soil, and then he looks down and it looks like a steel girder maybe as wide across as he is and then he looks over the edge of girder. More gears pounding away into nothing and he thinks what would happen if he had shifted in the darkness and he had fallen into the gears, they not far below the girder, not more than six feet, how would pain have felt in that perfect dark? (belt buckle), (doesn’t love him anymore), (car crashes again, life theme).

            Before him though is the biggest gear, at least his height times five, and behind him much the same, and these gears turn upwards with motion gentle and lumbering like high school football captain plus twenty years, brain damage, quiet, weight gain, wife beating, dead end job, meatloaf for dinner again? But above it is another gear this one up too and above it another gear pattern much the same and he looks down and he looks up and he recognizes down is not an option and sides too far to reach and they but more cogwheels, these not so perfectly situated for virtiguous climb.

            So onto cogwheel edge he grips, moist, oily, slick, can just hold on, scraping off metal with fingernail tips, good thing he didn’t trim them, and he feels his body pulled upwards and sick sinking feeling in his stomach and his arms aren’t strong anymore, used to be like ropes, toned them, Robert liked that it was what got them talking and who would have guessed rope arms could be start of something like that and it's over now but it sure was something before it was nothing.

            And up and up the cogwheel climbs, Francis clinging to its face sheer, fingernails skittering but holding death to life and backwards again, opposition to inevitable, climb up, then next cogwheel and he knows he has to move before he gets dragged between the cogwheels, body popping like overripe melon, not enough light here for that shattered watermelon colour, and just before final moment, life now before death, he grabs onto wheel above him, and this one grip is harder, negative grip he thinks its called or maybe that’s something else, either way vertical part ways towards him and he’s slipping but wheel seems to be rising faster and before he can fall he is high enough to lock feet (remembered to remove feet from last cogwheel at just last minute, right minute, could have been finality) and clarify grip, and upwards on second cogwheel now he climbs.

            Up and up and up and he glances down to see the girder and it seems not so far as it should seem and he still can’t remember falling asleep and can’t know how he woke up here and just knows he did wake up and the oil on the wheels is gumming up his hands, sticking together but sliding off the metal, and everything hurts and he wishes he’d bothered to use that pull up bar he got God knows why, would’ve helped now, but he’s moving and he looks up and he thinks he sees light or maybe it's an illusion but

            Very suggestion, notion, idea, theory, light at end of tunnel, point of hope against the darkness, star singular on cloud socked night, spurs onwards new strength in arms and two more cogwheels he rides and he thinks maybe he can do this and though the light seems not closer and in fact seems fainter he knows in his heart he is approaching fast and that the light shall soon be with him and he shall be free of this Hell and all shall thenceforth be good.

            Maybe call back that guy from that bar, he seemed nice and maybe go visit his mom at the retirement home, no wait, dead, keeps forgetting, not callous, just hard thing to force self to remember, can’t just sink in like into water, hard thing to believe, death, especially one so close. Should have called that guy back. Visited more.

            But his arms are giving out and his fingers are slipping more and more and his shoes what tread once had is now coated thick with oil and all is slipping and falling and all burns and then he looses his grip and he meant not to loose his grip but he loses his grip.

            As he falls through the darkness the light seems but a dream of fresh baked bread cooked with cinnamon and apples on Autumn night long gone, kid again, happy again, never happy, but the bread was there and his mom was too and it was good and it was warm and the night was beautiful and the stars all above called to him and were there and maybe the light and the stars and the bread were all made of the same stuff and he’s falling and he feels air rushing under him, air tastes sour and wrong, and he’s falling.

            And then he hits hard, feels right ankle snap immediately, screams but no one can hear him so he doesn’t scream and just opens lips and rushes air through lungs, tongue forms pattern of tongues, and he feels leg being pulled under but immediate moment before impact, pain, fingers grabbed something, looks up, girder, and his leg is being pulled under and there is no word for the pain because pain is an easy word and this isn’t easy and he reminds himself he can’t pass out, must free his leg, shock will save him from the pain, just has to stay awake, and he pulls and his arms strain and pop and pull and that word again pain said too easy, wrong, and but still he pulls loose somehow his leg, and onto the girder he pulls his body and lets it fall there discarded behind 7-11 on county highway fast food wrapper used condom homeless man.

            He looks now at his leg in front of him and below the knee it exists not but bleeding seems minimal by grace of God and he pulls off his shirt, tears it into bandage, staunches the blood flow, then lays back, pain subsiding.

            And he lays there for a long time he doesn’t know how long because now the light seems practically non-existent and even if it had stayed with him it was unchanging so time was unchanging too, but it doesn’t matter because the light is gone, and he tries to measure time by the sounds of the gears, but every time he thinks he has some scheme reliable to his purposes, they seem to speed up or slow down.

            And eventually his leg stops screaming at him and his arms feel rested, grown stronger even maybe for the stress and pain of his first attempt at a climb, so he pulls himself, half crawl, one leg now, to the cogwheel in front of him, and he grabs on with his two hands (a blessing) and begins once again his ascent. 

Depressing Weekend: Midnight Seminary | Theland E. Thomas

There is no hope. There is no hope. There is no hope. Every day I wake up and turn on my phone hoping that someone contacted me. Who? A long lost friend? Lover? Someone I’ve never met? There is no one thinking about me in the middle of the night. And truth is, if there were I’d reject them outright. Same way I rejected my family and friends. There is no hope.

Open social media to upvote a post from some revolutionary candidate. This time he’s going to save the world. This time. This time there is no hope. Walk outside, suit and tie, sunny day, freezing air, go to school, drive to work, life is great, so unfair. There is no hope.

Every day the hype is not enough to convince me I’m not dying inside. They spent all this time trying to make me believe that if I got the next big milestone it would make me happy, and I convinced myself a time or two, but the truth is, even if I find my one true love, I’ll hate her too. There is no hope.

Some called my anti-materialism a trope, but I’m not anti-materialist. That would just make me a hypocrite. I’m just anti-everything-and-everyone, which makes me more of a hypocrite. Screaming “I love myself” at the top of my lungs didn’t convince me of it. There is no hope.

I’m losing sight again. My goals are far away, and I’m not sure I want them anymore. I really just want someone to hold me in the night. Someone to love and make love to. That too is impossible because I hate her elusive idea. She doesn’t exist for me, and if she did, she wouldn’t put up with my bullshit. There is no hope.

Met this girl at a party. Her name was Jasmine. I’m guessing it’s spelled like that. She caught my eye. Introduced herself. Cute. I just wanted to be around her. I wanted to dance with her even though I hate dancing. I wanted to not be me for a second. But she was already dancing with someone else. Because she doesn’t exist for me. And there was a sweet girl. Talking to me. All night. And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. By telling her. I’m not attracted to her. Because I’m shallow. And I hate myself.

Write what I think?

Curses. Curses. I wrap myself, I bathe myself in curses, curses that drip venomously through the wrinkles in my brain through my glands to every artery and organ and seep through my pores. Curses pouring from the mouths of the demons that deny me sleep and watch me from the shadows. I hear their mouths stretch open, and I give them what they want before I pray a shallow prayer. As I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, but I might die before I wake, and if I do, my soul forsake. For I’m a filthy dirty wretch not worthy of your love. I learned that back in Sunday school, no grace comes from above. Forgive me for my blasphemy, forgive me for my shame. Forgive me for my life of sin made manifest through pain. Forgive me for every little thing I’ve ever done. Forgive me for breathing. Forgive me for being born.

Now I’m so edgy. Now that I’ve written all this. Now that it’s almost 2 AM. What do I really think? What on earth could I possibly want? I think I just want to go back in time and re-do high school. Well, actually, I’d stop my parents from getting divorced. No, that’s a horrible idea. I’d just prevent them from ever meeting in the first place. Nah, I’d prevent my grandparents on both sides from meeting. Just kidding, I’d erase Jamaica completely. Scratch the whole New World thing actually, the Natives can have it back. And screw the British too. And all of Europe. Just. Just erase humanity. Just completely reverse the evolution of animals and earth. Just volcanoes everywhere. You know what, not even those. Just unmake the entire earth. And the solar system. And the galaxy. And the universe. Just go back into the big bang or whatever, I don’t even care.

Trust | Alexander T. Damle

Fall

               Up above a star shape blinks and tingles melodic, a candelabra on the edge of a grand piano, swirls of light, paths of falling once-life-givers now downwards, thick like a virus stuck to lungs and like the lungs the night breathes heavy for their presence. All around more ground-like are stars too, these different but not just for their electricity (incandescent and fluorescent and neon and plasma and cathode ray and lcd), but for the fact of the arrangement of their beauty, not the Pollockian randomizations of the cosmotic, but some man kind design on the Sale, the Scam, the Freaks, the Geeks, the con-men and cheap games and cheaper prizes, lit up brighter than life, pink and green teddy bears the size of those who oggle them, asking their kin to buy into the con, for them, and some the kin do, for the lights that come on in the kids eyes with The Win. Sticky, smells like cotton candy chewing gum cheap perfume (prom queen hanging off some small town football star), burbling smell-tinge popcorn and funnel cake speckles the cool night air as it roasts away in machines the color of expensive sport cars, sex, the cars far absent from Place Like Here. All through the air too is the heckles, the carnie cries, screams of orgiastic delight erupting in clusters from rides spinning up above the games but below the stars, their lights blurring into confetti streamers.

               Off just to the boardwalk’s left, below a waist high fence made out of old wood, scarred and pockmarked and slightly rotted and slightly green from brine and sea air and the occasional dropping (falling hard and malevolent like snow on the Coldest Night of a great Minnesota blizzard) of shit, deposited from up on high by a disinterested seagull, lap hard with some great anger, sea waves, calling out their first great cry from their last port of call, a million miles from here, but likely by a scene much the same, lights and colours and energy and love, mens’ deepest yearnings always called to with such passion by sea air’s brine.

               Then down the boardwalk wanders one couple, and he’s not a football player and she’s not a prom queen, but they hold each other closer together than those illustrious (in small town’s small definition of the word) two, and they talk and laugh and each peel of laughter from one alights a rosy glitter across the other’s face, and the girl brushes a lock of too-long hair out of the boy’s eye, and then they stop laughing and just look at each other, trying to fall down into each others’ eyes, souls reflected within sharp-coloured face-saucers (their souls or the souls they imagine in the one across from them or the two grown no longer so mutually exclusive), and the boy gingerly plants a kiss on the girl’s lips and she kisses him back.

               Then the boy tightens his grip around the girl’s slim waist (and she once again pushes aside a lock of hair), and parts his lips, as if to speak some truth contained deep within, but then he shuts them again as his words, though yet unspoken, are interrupted, as Another steps into their Perfect Two, breaks the shell that had, over the last stretch of forward motion, grown up around them like an egg around an as yet unborn baby bird, and the voice of the Other serves now to call them into his world.

               He speaks words carefully prepared and practiced to a million young lovers a night, all so perfectly ensnared by one another that his intrusions are allowed to worm their way in as a virus, to capture the minds and hearts and plant Something New beyond their simple love.

               The two step up on the man’s small stage, borders harsh cut with stage lights, blinding top down glare, all immediately outside their space’s heat belonging to shadow, despite the miasmatic phosphorescence smeared as jam on bread across the night sky all around, but the two can feel the faces on them, clustered as the man speaks more, more calls into the night to gather round and see the proof of trust, a physicalization of that old cry - “Put your money where your mouth is!” And the simple notion that burrows itself hard and fast like a bullet shot from a long rifle into chest, and remains there, sitting around and just waiting for the right time to rear its ugly head, the man’s message - if the boy here fails there is something deeply rotten in their love, proof that something is broken like a piece old china.

               But it doesn’t mean anything, the boy thinks as he takes his place behind the girl, she with arms crossed in front of her, eyes directed forwards, piercing beyond the light and darkness, looking seemingly out over the ocean with all its self-alleged infinity, darkness not just at the surface but down deep to its very soul, creatures who never see in light, who never mate for life, who never hold Trust like we hold Trust, and yet beyond the ocean some other Nation, it with its own Trust and its own Trust with this one, and she hopes she can trust like the boy said on that warm spring night with the Jack Daniels  on some back road in the woods, their young bodies lying naked against one another in the back of her truck, perfect trust, forever trust.

               And then, like that, the girl begins to tip backwards, and as she crosses the point of no return, time slows imperceptibly and it will never speed back up again and before she started she was young and life was free and there was trust and now she hears as time slows the breeze whistling slightly past her ears, air pushing up on the back of her neck, the cries of the Watchers, sees above her lights of some ride circling fast and people cry out from it, and she’s still falling and though time is moving so slow as to count the electrons, she knows she’s been falling too long and then she feels her back crack against the wood of the stage and her breath go out of her, and all around her, now at ground level, a few people scream, and the boy, all he can do is whisper oh fuck.

               The carnie barks out something again about trust and now suddenly the trust is gone, so much staked on it for these past few months between those who were, just seconds earlier the Two and are now just the two. It’s not falling out of love, but it's the end of a kind of perfect love.

               Later that night the two sit again under bright lights, but these lights, rather than a sea, a spot against the darkness, an old ice cream stand stuck at the end of a crumbling precipice looking down onto waves crashing and roiling at sharp rocks, the top of an unlit road leading up from the carnival, and under the chemical light, the girl can see dried tears on the boys face, as his tongue lashes out in short licks directed dispassionately at vanilla ice cream, and she tries to say it’s okay, her sipping on a milkshake, lipstick smudged slightly, acne showing through under makeup, the same seer of tears, and for each okay, the boy seems to fade from her a little more, and she knows something irrecoverable is gone.

Road

               Old Honda Nighthawk going a little too fast down lonely road under blanket of fog halfway between two slices of nowhere, the deer popping up as if deposited by fog itself, sliding into the turn, laying the bike flat, an awful screeching noise, and then a burning pain in side, a tree, broken ribs, bike will be fine, given repair, ribs too, question is getting both to a relevant doctor, given current lack of locality.

               The motorcyclist, face young, eyes tired, sits back against the tree, holding his side, trying to pull off his leathers, check for damage, hope for someone to come along, call an ambulance. Or AAA, even. Just his luck his phone would shatter when met with ground’s rising impact.

               Though it’s not but 5pm, early summer, with the fog all seems so dark, road unlit, beyond the tree behind him, all is nought but white, a haze of possibility, could be a house not more than two dozen yards away, could be nothing for two dozen miles. Could be anything, really. He checks his watch, and slowly the hands turn and yet the road remains abandoned, as if man straight up gave up on this patch of earth. Through the fog he can’t even tell if he’s in farmland or forest or those rolling plains of nothing he remembers from his childhood, though he figures it's not that. Can’t hear the ocean here, so that’s something. It’s not much, but it’s something, a suggestion of an identity. Better phone. Should’ve gotten a better phone. Put it in a deeper pocket. Something. Should’ve done something. Been in a few minor accidents before, even broken ribs, though not on his bike, but then there was always someone to save him. Out here though...

               Then from somewhere in the fog, down the road tracking black and double yellow before being all consumed, comes a dull rumble, and the motorcyclist can’t help but think of a line he read on a half-felled wall somewhere - “something wicked this way comes.” He hopes he is wrong, and rather than wicked thus comes a pretty girl in a Porsche, but this isn’t the place for it, not the night.

               Black van, paint chipping off, dent in the left rear fender, what appears to be duct tape over a side panel. Within not a pretty girl, but a man, 40 something, balding, white wifebeater, stained, overweight slightly, but strong looking, big. Something wicked then, his fate for the night. As the van slows to a stop, the brakes make a noise like a pig having its throat slit. Then the door opens.

               “You alright kid?”

               “Laid out the bike... think I broke some ribs.”

               “Shit, that’s some fucking luck. Out here. Nothin’ much out here. I’m only here because I’m visiting an aunt... I’m a carnie, see, and we just happened to end up in a little town near here.”
               “You got a phone? Call an ambulance?”

               “No, don’t do phones. Don’t like people much, you know? Don’t worry though. I’ll get you to a hospital. Not real far. Twenty minutes, thirty.”

               “I...”

               “C’mon, I got space for your bike in back.”

               “It’s pretty heavy, easily 450 pounds...”

               “Hah. I deadlift that before breakfast.” The motorcyclist wants to object, it’s wrong, it feels wrong, warning signs, so many warning signs. And there’s no way the carnie is lifting his bike. Carnie gets out, helps the motorcyclist into the passenger seat, before unlocking the back of his van, opening the doors, then going to the bike. He bends down and the motorcyclist watches, his eyes more than a little worried. As the man stretches out his arms, muscles bend and bulge like an old Popeye cartoon, and then his thigh muscles and glutes engage like actuators on a machine arm, and as lifting nought but air, the man lifts the bike, not just to two wheels but into the sky, supported just by his arms, before setting it, with a care oft reserved for children, into van’s rear. Doors slam shut.

               Something to this night’s air feels decidedly fatalist, and in the motorcyclist’s life, such atmospheric portents had always seemed to come before something decidedly Awful. With each breath inwards he takes, the motorcyclist thinks he catches some smell new on the van, spilled booze, bourbon, judging by bottles rolling about his feet, old cigarettes, then something sweet and rotten, turns slightly and looks over his shoulder, into the back of the van, a few boxes, normal enough, but what of that stain, its colour an indication of-

               “So kid, what brings you to this patch of scorched earth?”

               “Heading to the city.”

               “Oh, yeah? Why you going there?”

               “Uh, gotta see a friend. She uh...”

               “Yeah?” The motorcyclists regrets his noises towards a connection.

               “Well, something happened, she’s kind of shook up, and I haven’t seen her in a bit, so I figured I’d go see how she’s doing, like, yeah.”

               “She a friend, or a, well a friend?” The intonation can’t easily be described, placed on that second friend, but it’s meaning makes itself known immediately to all within ear shot.

               “Just a friend. Old friend. Good friend.”

               “She pretty?”

               “I mean...” The motorcyclist is wary, something about the carnie doesn’t even begin to sit right. “Like, she’s my friend, you know?”

               “Don’t give me none of that shit.” Maybe it’s not but maybe it is, maybe it’s gruff, maybe that edge is anger, maybe it’s some speck of phlegm or bile caught up in the throat. “She pretty or fucking not? Unless you’re gay, which case, I mean, I ain’t judgin’ or nothin’, but, well, never got that whole thing... don’t prevent me from helping you, mind, but. Well, as you said, you know.” And now the motorcyclist knows it's there and knows something has just slipped in the carnie’s voice. Something just slipped South and some affected culturability has just made itself scarce.

               “No, I mean, uh, no, I’m not gay, not that, but, uh... I mean sure, she’s pretty enough, I guess.”

               “Then why she just a, hah, a friend?”

               “We just don’t see each other that way.”

               “Don’t see each other that way... don’t see each other that way... now what kind of horseshit is that? Jesus fuck, I got a hot woman wants to be my friend, I’ll be her friend, but I’ll also do my damndest to be her friend, you get me?”

               “It’s just, it’s not...”

               “Maybe you fuckin’ are a gay. Don’t want to put it in your pretty friend? Fuckin’ shit kid, you sure you not gay?” The voice is now raised and the motorcyclist’s eyes linger on a patch of colour particularly ominous right below the man’s right pectoral, spread like a virus across the slightly off-colour, wrong-smell wife beater. The kid starts to cough, and his side starts hurting like he’s been shot there. “Shit kid, you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just joking!” The motorcyclist’s eyes lock most briefly with the carnie’s and now that wicked thing that was coming seems to have arrived.

               Hospital bed with starched hospital sheets and over the window dreary hospital drapes and septic hospital smell and clinical hospital beep beep general din, brightly lit fog gone. The motorcyclist looks around, looks down, bandages all over his abdominals, breathes and it hurts slightly. He sits up and looks at another young man sleeping in a bed next to him, bandages on him similar, a cop sitting across from them, looking bored. Nods at the motorcyclist, says something about being here for the room’s other occupant.  Nurse comes in.

               “How are you feeling sir?”

               “Ah, hurts to breathe a bit. Better than I was though.”

               “That’s what I’m looking for.”

               “How’d I get here?”

               “A man found you on the edge of a road, brought you in. Even brought your bike.”

               “Oh, yeah?”

               “He’s actually waiting outside. Wanted to make sure you were okay. He’s been real sweet, asking all of us about you. He seems really worried.” She pauses. “You seem to be doing alright - would you like to see him?”

               “Yeah, sure, why not?”

               The carnie walks in, same wife beater, now even more soaked with sweat, same broken looking face, but when he sees the motorcyclist sitting up in bed, his face lights up.

9mm

               As the mid-morning sun floats hazy through the blinds, splitting itself up amongst flasks and beakers, reflecting here off chrome barrel, light the colour of peach ice cream, the old man sees a cone the colour of the light in the hand of the daughter he almost had. Instead he has a Beretta and a lab (well, it’s not his, as his boss is so fond of repeating, loud and stoned), and money and a fast car, and then the kid came along and he knows it's silly and it's a trope but he feels somehow like the kid belongs to him as well. Kid seems real, more than the daughter at least.

Kid’s asleep. Shouldn’t be. Supposed to be watching the cooks. Job. That’s the job. Watch the cooks. Keep a gun under the shoulder and an eye open and that’s the job. Cook looks bored, and a little bit hungover but she’s the best so who cares if she has to drink just to make it through. Now he thinks of his brother and his father and bonds of - but then he’s interrupted, something on the monitor, outside front camera.

               Not right.

               Something’s not right.

               Van across the road.

               No other traffic.

               Too quiet.

               Looks closely. What could be glinting on that not distant rooftop? And that sound, is that, he’s heard that sound, fwap fwap, oil fires, Kuwait, desert, guns, and he checks his and his eyes linger briefly on the kid. He’s dressed cheap, beat up grey sneakers, used to be white, torn shorts, t-shirt from some children’s show, rising and falling with breaths in out in out, Sig Sauer strung up in a shoulder holster, right side, kid’s a leftie. Doesn’t know why he just notices this now. Then he taps the kid on the shoulder and the kid stirs. Old man takes his gun from his own holster. Kid. Get your gun out. Then to the cook - in the bathroom, now. Neither has to be told twice.

               Old man looks around the room, used to be a kid’s bedroom in a nice suburban home, but then the neighborhood went down hill as some other neighborhood came up it. On the second floor. Windows along one wall, facing an industrial site. Another with no windows. Rest facing inwards, door in one to the bathroom, other to a hallway. Tells the kid to watch the hall, looks out the window.

               Downstairs a door comes crashing inwards, hard, and he hears a gruff woman yell to the doorman to get down, then he hears a short burst, MP5, he reckons. Boots on the stairs. He makes a calculation internally, briefly, kicks open the door to the bathroom, shoots the cook in the head, lights a pile of something dangerous and powdered sitting amongst the beakers. Two minutes. Max.

               Protection inside if he goes inside if he plays it like he’s supposed to play it. For the kid, maybe. Then to the kid Come on! And the kid turns from the hall and as he does that voice again and freeze this time and the kid freezes, but the old man, 9mm clears his holster, puts three in the cop, just like he was taught, and he sees the cop go down but then another round strikes the kid in the shoulder, and the man plays it now like he’s not supposed to play it and pulls the kid into the room and slams the door (steel reinforced, few seconds, all they need), then the kid turns his head to the old man. Blood, belly wound, pretty bad. Could be worse but this is pretty bad, and then the kid opens his mouth but the old man tells him to shut up, and they go to the window and the old man opens it, pushes the kid to go, reminds him to roll and again the kid starts to talk and again the old man tells him to shut up. Fire burning. Should hit just the Wrong thing pretty soon now. Old man follows the kid out, feels his joints try their socket limits upon impact, age infectious.

               Get away plan, simple, half a block, a car. Go.

               Picks the kid up, kid really hurting, old man can tell, start running, along the side of the industrial site, cut in between some buildings. Old man was worried about that sniper, apparently didn’t draw a bead fast enough. Or maybe something else, who knows. The kid needs a break, breathing hard, bleeding more, old man takes off his shirt, tears it like he was taught, tells the kid to use it to staunch the bleeding, he’ll be fine, just gotta make it to the car. Then the kid looks at the man again and starts talking, and this time he doesn’t stop when told.

               He tells the man that the cops made the house because he gave it to them. He needed a way out, he couldn’t do it. Wasn’t cut out for this life. Wasn’t cut out for any life, maybe, but certainly not this one. Tells the old man to leave him behind. Old man looks at him and all he can do is choke out that it doesn’t matter.

               It does. This is it then, the old man considers with only passing notice given for the blood that now coats his hand like fresh paint on the side of a house, the end of everything. Bullets and blood, kid in him would’ve wanted this. Kid in him’s dead though. Old man all that’s left, old man doesn’t wish for his shootout in blood and fury, would’ve been content now to die quiet. Wrong life for it though.

               A loud boom from behind, old man turns briefly to look at the fireball as the house is propelled outwards by the disease that had been growing within.

               Kid’s breathing a little easier now. Old man tells him to move. Kid says no. Kid says it’s over. Old man says it’s not over until guns are empty, car is shot to hell, they lie dead in the street. Not there yet. Kid says he broke the rules. Done everything he shouldn’t have. Old man only one ever been nice to him, went against him, hard.

               Old man says it doesn’t matter.

               Kid says it’s all that matters.

               Old man begins to pull the kid along, and pretty soon the kid starts moving by his own legs, and this is good the old man thinks, this isn’t going anywhere if they don’t keep moving. Wonder cops aren’t on them already. SWAT pointman (pointwoman?, vocabulary of violence, changing with the times) must be dead. Doesn’t make sense though. But who knows - don’t count your blessings, isn’t that what they say?

Out from between the buildings, and the sun still laying low in the sky, cuts out hard in front of them, blinded momentarily, not good, the old man thinks. Very much not good. But the car, almost to the car, get in the car and drive the car and get gone, boss will protect him, he’s good, he did what he was supposed to do. Then the old man notices the kid’s breathing has slowed.

And then he hears boots and he hears the chopper again, and cars, more cars, and then as his vision clears, though the sun remains, cops all over him, and he knows he doesn’t have much of a shot left. The kid fucked him, and the old man knows this, and the old man whispers this to the kid, asks him why he did it, and the kid says he doesn’t know, but he regretted it as soon as he did, it felt bad, felt wrong, felt like he broke something sacred. Old man tells him he did, but he’s just a kid and kids do stupid things, but he’s an old man and he’s used all his second chances. Then he tells the kid to live, he has the chance now, life he chooses, then he takes the kid’s gun, knows it’s a lie but says it anyway.

Two guns, the kid in the old man’s dreams ended like this. He turns to the nearest car and he sees guns sighted down all around him, and he starts to pull triggers, bullets going all wild, doesn’t work like in the movies. His shadow is caught long in the sun as that sniper puts him down, all 9mm rounds burying themselves far from targets, trees and siding and all the rest but flesh.

And the old man’s body falls next to the kid and the kid knows the old man is dead and he wonders if he is too.

Date Night

               The woman stares at her glass, the way the stem tapers up, expands out, bleeding edge, obfuscating restaurant beyond, empty chair across from her drawn into sharp focus, even as all else seems to be drawn out into absurdity. Her eyes drift towards her purse, from which her phone finds its way to her hand, checks the time. Again. Ten minutes late. She knows she shouldn’t worry, but she hates sitting in restaurants alone, always concerned that each sideways look is couched in judgement.

               Then from behind her the man walks, confident and with a quick step, back straight, expensive black sport coat, tight fitting white shirt, buttoned to a couple inches below the neck, tailored jeans, just the right side of too tight, clinging to his ass, just as the shirt shows off his pecs, chiseled with hard work and protein supplements. He’s more handsome in person than in his pictures. The woman feels vaguely self-conscious, naked in her cheap dress, set self-consciously behind the empty table.

               Then the anxiety vanishes as she rises to meet the man and he takes her in a warm embrace.

               “It’s good to finally meet you! You’re so much prettier in person! Not to say you’re not beautiful in your pictures, haha...” His words are weighed with a careful mix of confidence and that sort of subtle nerdy anxiety that the woman finds instantly disarming. More importantly, the man in front of her isn’t so different from the one pictured on his dating profile, unlike so many she’d already met.

               21st century dating is one hell of a thing.

               “Yeah, I was going to say the same about you.”

               “Oh, don’t flatter me.” A brief pause - “So, you ever been here before?”

               “No, isn’t really my sort of... well...”

               “Hah, not mine either. But, you know, first impressions. You don’t mind it, do you?”

               “No, no, it’s nice.”

               “Yeah, I’ve heard the steak is good, unless, of course...”

               “I’m vegetarian.”

               “So am I, actually! Reason I say I’ve heard...”

               They talk on this way for a while, unconcerned and un-self conscious, a feeling that surprises the woman, in the best possible way. Online dating so often turns into an exercise in putting in the best foot forward, while simultaneously trying to reckon the true self on the one sat across from you. Now though, both those sat at the table feel real, honest, genuine, not their deepest self, that reserved theoretically for some time down the line, but at least a function of it, and not the function of the self reserved for cocktail parties and job interviews.

               “Me? I grew up in a little town by the ocean. I was the football captain, actually. Dated the prom queen and everything. Realized after I graduated that I didn’t want to be that guy, so I went off to university, got a real career going.”

               “You miss it?”

               “What?”

               “Being, well, important, I guess.”

               “I mean, sometimes. What I really remember is wandering down the boardwalk with the carnival in town, prom queen on my arm and everything, it all felt just like a Springsteen song. Seemed so perfect, so right. I don’t feel like that much anymore. But maybe that’s for the best. Life isn’t perfect. Not supposed to be.”

               “Yeah, that’s true. That’s definitely true. As soon as you know something for certain, it ceases to really be interesting.”

               “With you there. So what about you? What’s your story?”

               “I grew up in the city. My mom never had much money, stuck between a half dozen shitty waitressing jobs. I never knew my dad.”

               “That must have been hard.”

               “I don’t know - my mom said she doesn’t think he ever even knew I existed. They got together, then he went off to Kuwait and never looked back. I always wonder what he ended up doing in life, hell, I don’t know if he even made it home.”
               “Have you ever thought about looking him up?”

“Nah, I figure if he’d cared to have a daughter, he would’ve at least talked to my mom after he shipped out. After he did what he did, I don’t think I’d ever be able to trust him. Or want to.”

               And so, common pleasantries slip away to reveal deeper truths amongst the two, life and family and history and politics, those things you’re always told not to mention on a first date, not unless you want to do something awful like forge a Genuine Connection, and so between the two it was formed, and they eat their meals, finish up desert.

               “So now comes the most fractious part of any first date - the check.” The man says with a smile, and the woman braces. “I’m not one for traditions, but it’s also my feeling that the person who asks should always pick up the bill.”

               “Works for me.”

               Then the bill is paid, and that awkward after date parting comes along, as it always does.

               “So.”

               “So.”

“I, uh... I’ve got a car here, if you want a ride home?”

“Yeah, that’d be good. Cabs in this city always make me more than a little bit wary.”

“I don’t blame you.”

               Cruising down the freeway, windows open to the summer wind, music beating along quietly under their conversation, the woman is reminded of movies she used to love as a kid, and the man is reminded again of being a football captain, although he’s replaced his cheap pick-up with an Audi, and outlaw country with mid-century jazz.

               “You know, if you want, I don’t live too far from you. If you want, we could stop at mine for a drink...”

               “Uh, well... I’m not...”

               “Don’t worry, when I say a drink, I mean a drink. You said you like whiskey? I’ve got some good stuff.”

               “I... sure, why not. Just a drink.”

               In the elevator up to his twenty eighth floor apartment, towering above the city, looking down from up on high, silent judgment, the woman stares nervously at the floor, holding her purse close. As they approached his, the man got quieter, and this seems wrong and he suddenly seems wrong, his posture more slouching. Trust issues. That’s what her mom always said. She said she had her reasons. Didn’t want to get into it. Reasons, good reasons.

               Elevator doors slide open with a ding, and the man smiles and holds out his hand, indicating for her to step out first, then they walk together towards his flat and he only smiles, but she still looks warily at the floor.

               They stop at the door to a corner apartment for the man to fish in his pockets for his keys.

               “Everything okay?” He asks, a look of slight consternation on his face, keys still not located.

               “Yeah, uh, why?” The man now switches pockets, and smiles again as he comes up immediately with a set of keys, large and jangling.

               “You just seem a little quiet.”

               “Oh, yeah, sorry, I just... I’m fine, really.”

               “So, you got a preference on style of whiskey? Highland, Islay, Lowland, Speyside... I think I don’t have anything from Campbeltown right now...” His apartment has high ceilings, exotic wood, glass and concrete and granite, a wall full of books, a TV bigger than some cars she’s owned. And from the corner facing out, the whole city, arrayed in light, stretching out to stop abruptly with farmland. Far down the coast line she sees a little patch of lights and then the land comes to a head at a peninsula.

               “Holy shit...”

               “100 mile view on a clear night, the Realtor told me. I didn’t really believe them until I saw it myself.”

               “Holy fucking shit.”

               “How bout that whiskey then?”

               “Uh, I mean, when I said I liked whiskey, I was more talking JD, Southern Comfort... maybe some Johnnie Walker Black if I’m feeling fancy... sorry...”

               “Hey, don’t apologize. I can introduce you to some of their Scottish brothers if you want. If you’re not feeling adventurous tonight, I mix a pretty good old fashioned.”

               “I’m... I’m sorry, but... I don’t think this is going to work.”
               “What?”

               “I... it’s just not going to.”

               “Look, I’m sorry...” He seems perfectly calm, as if the entire situation is couched firmly in the palm of his hand. “Really, I am. I didn’t... I’m sorry if this was a little much... I’m... I’m not used to... I really am sorry.” And now the woman’s truly confused, where is the truth, the suave guy who she’d been talking so openly to all night, or the anxiety, the strangeness, the absurd apartment.

               “That’s... sorry. Maybe I’m just being rash. I’ll stay for a drink, I guess. Just one. An old fashioned sounds good.”

               “Sure - two old fashioneds coming up. Take a seat, it’ll just be a few minutes.” So she sits on the couch, real leather, she realizes immediately, not that it would be anything else in a place like this. Over in the kitchen, open to the sitting room, mid-century modern she thinks the style is called, he mixes drinks with smiles on his face. Then another burst of suspicion crosses her -

               “Hey, I thought you said you were vegetarian.”

               “Uh... oh yeah, I am.”

               “Leather couches?”

               “They were here when I moved in. I figured it would be wasteful to get rid of them, leather or not.”

               “Oh. So, I don’t think you ever told me - what do you do for a living?”

               “It’s not important... I don’t really like to talk about it.” And again alarm bells are ringing. And then he’s walking towards her with a drink in each hand. More alarms, five alarm fire, twister over trailer park.

               “You know... you know what... I think, I think I forgot I have to be somewhere...” she moves for the door and the man, his face sinks.

               “Oh, uh... I’m uh... I’m sorry... that’s too... I’ll call you then maybe?”

               And she’s out the door, and she’s on the elevator, and as the doors close, she sinks to the ground, and holds her head in her hands.