A Francisville Reunion
The sign for Lucky’s Pub squeaked above him in the night wind. Its hanging plastic had green letters, a foaming mug, and the head of a buck with many points.
Jameson could not see Sadie anywhere. He had barely seen her in the bar, but she had spoken in a low voice, her voice, distinct among the chatter and Kenny Chesney. “I want to see you,” she said, and the heat in his groin burned through his tether to reason. He had closed his tab and rushed to this empty curb.
Twenty-four years ago he failed out of college and came to see Sadie. Two days later he left a note, her, his uncle’s house and Francisville. He got to a restaurant on the West Coast and traded charm for gratuities until a regular asked if he’d considered selling real estate. That was 1998, in Seattle.
He had thought little of Sadie since. Jameson had money to burn in a hot town and he married one of the girls. He did not think of her during the flings that preceded and followed the divorce.
He had sent his RSVP for the reunion on a whim. When the reminder came and he no longer had a plus-one, he tried to find Sadie on Facebook, but then she appeared in Lucky’s and said, “I want to see you.” She had turned to the door almost as soon as she spoke, but she was Sadie. He remembered her voice and the smell of her, and Jameson looked down the road outside the pub and knew where she was.
The Route 66 Diner was a house beside a vacant lot; in some distant decade Sadie’s grandparents had knocked down interior walls in favor of tables, on which they served blueberry pancakes and home fries to loggers. Jameson and Sadie had fucked atop one of those tables on a night when their houses weren’t free and Sadie slipped the key from her mother’s purse. He had poured syrup across her torso and fucked her and she had loved it, and he had masturbated to the memory until he found other girls in his semester at Penn State.
The gutter had pulled away from the porch roof. Faded block letters still read “Route 66 Diner” with “Truckers Welcome” in cursive below, but time or blunt force had torqued the posts and sign into bent ruin. A Coldwell Banker sign on a smaller post offered showings by appointment; it was old, too. When Jameson turned the doorknob it rattled in his hand.
The air smelled stale and he could make out little in the dim light from the street, but peering to the far wall he saw an outline seated on a table, their table. “It’s been a long time, Sadie,” he said.
The fluorescent lights burned his eyes when she flicked them on, and his vision adjusted gradually. “It has, Jameson,” she said. There was no ambient noise here, and she spoke with a smoker’s sandpaper voice. She had patchy gray hair, gray and mottled skin, and a body too thin to look well.
Jameson sat on the next table. He ran his finger through its coat of dust for an excuse to look away. “How long’s it been closed?”
“A few months after Mom died. I hurt my back and gave up.”
“When was that?”
“You got me pregnant, Jameson.”
She lit a cigarette in the silence. As she exhaled he found his tongue. “What?”
“That time right before you left. You got me pregnant.”
“You never told me.”
Her laugh merged into a cough. “You never cared.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Named him Jameson.”
His gurgling nausea thickened, and to suppress it he yelled, “Why would you do that? Why didn’t you find me?”
“I pictured the way you’d cry when you came home and met our son. Then I wised up, and his name was to remind everybody of what you did.”
“Where is he?”
Sadie’s hand trembled as she raised the cigarette. She breathed it deeply before answering. “The cemetery off Belmont Road. Electrical fire. He was six.”
The fluorescents’ hum grew loud while Sadie smoked and Jameson bent his head toward his knees and a carpet stain. It took him a long time to perform the calculation, but the answer was 22.
He asked, “Where were you when it happened?”
“A few thousand miles closer than you were.”
That angered him. He met her glare; she blew smoke toward him. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
She snorted. “Ask around.”
“What do you want?”
“You owe me, Jameson.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, bullshit. A mountain of it. You’re king of the mountain now, aren’t you, Jameson? Go off twenty-four years, buy some drinks at Lucky’s, make sure everybody sees your wallet and fancy watch?” She leaned forward and pointed her cigarette at him. “You owe me, Jameson.” She put out the butt on the table.
Unanswerable questions drifted through the stagnant air. He had to leave; he stood and opened his wallet. He counted and placed the bills on Sadie’s table. “I have $132.”
He waited for release. She watched him with her hollowed eyes and made no move toward the cash.
“There still an ATM outside the station?” he asked. She nodded. “I’ll be back.”
“Sure,” she said. Sadie pulled another cigarette from her pack. “I’ll be right here. Waiting.”
A traffic light hung over the four-way. It wavered in the wind and blinked red onto the gas station and the dollar store across the road. Jameson inserted his card. His finger hovered over the withdrawal button but pushed “Check Balance.” He turned back toward the sidewalk. There was a pet and garden store, a lot with U-Hauls, Lucky’s, a few houses, secondhand and hardware stores with apartments above. The diner waited in the dark beyond. A church needing paint stood just past the intersection; its sign advertised Sunday’s sermon, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.”
He ripped his card from the machine and strode away. Jameson pictured Sadie, moaning with syrup on her young breasts and Sadie, gaunt, cackling smoke from the end of the table as he thrust, and he put down his foot and his rented car sped down Route 66.
For Nostalgia’s Sake
I have no idea where I am going with this except to say that I’m a sucker for a good documentary and I watched one yesterday. In fact, the one I watched was so good for someone with my upbringing that I feel compelled to complete the circle, and to document it in turn.
I stumbled across “In the Blink of an Eye” on Prime Video and started watching it with low hopes, but it did what good documentaries do, pulling me in, tickling my memory back to one of the passions of my youth; a passion which, as happened with Christmas at an even younger age, had its glory stolen away by the money grab of commercialism.
Those of you who know anything about me from my time here on site know that I am a redneck sprung from rednecks. I do not say this proudly, although I could. It is simply fact. And being a redneck, I like automobile racing (at least I did, once upon a time). In particular I like southern stock car racing. Like me, NASCAR sprung up from the red clay of our shared southern home; a heavy, sticky soil that packs out smooth and hard as hawked-out cement until it is perfectly suited to race cars on. So they did just that, those good ol’ boys of another era who came home from WWII having gained the three things required to create the perfect twister of a red-dust storm; mechanical knowledge, engineering experience, and a lust for excitement.
I vividly remember my first time at a race track. My father took me out to East-Side Speedway one night around 1970, when I was still small enough to be toted in his arms late at night. I remember the glow of the lights in the distance from where we parked, the roaring of cars which could not yet be seen, the anxiousness in my dad’s step to get those cars into view. I remember the roughness of the wooden bleachers beneath my bare feet, the glimmer of the lights off the whirling metal, the smells of wetted dust, burning high-test, popping corn and suspense. It was only small-time, small town racing, but it was sprinkled liberally with the magic dust of Grand National dreams.
A couple of years after that night, and right after the divorce, the old man called up my mother one Friday and asked if he could take me with him up to Martinsville, to see the “big boys” race. Caught quick like that and without an excuse handy Mom said yes. That weekend was the highlight of my childhood; camping out in the back of Pop’s pickup truck and joining in frisbee games where fifty-or-so Blue Ribbon and Marlboro toting fathers gathered in an outside circle throwing a bunch of frisbees across to each other while their screeching flock of kids in the middle happily chased down, and tussled over, any wayward throws (myself right in there with ’em). There were banjos picking over in that direction, and race cars roaring in the other, colorful flags flying on high with a blimp slow-rolling against the clouds, and best of all Richard Petty was right yonder; King Richard we called him, a sparse man sporting a big hat beside a sky-blue race car any of the three of which… man, hat or car… were already larger than life. It couldn’t possibly get any better for an eleven year old, yet it did. After that weekend followed Bristol, Rockingham, and finally Charlotte, the crown jewel of racing. What a summer!
You have to keep in mind that this was all pre-1979, when began an unquenchable thirst throughout America for all things NASCAR. Prior to 1979 Winston Cup racing was little more than a southern joke. The races were held in the south, the drivers were from the south, and there was little to no television coverage (the Daytona 500 being the lone exception as a once a year novelty event on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports”). The Daytona 500 is unique in that it is equivalent to NASCAR’s “Super Bowl”, but it is strangely held as the first race of the season, rather than the last. They run it first, in late February, because Daytona is usually warm then while the rest of America is still frozen. This was especially the case in 1979, as a gigantic snowstorm had settled over most of the east coast, forcing people inside on a Sunday afternoon, and this after the NFL season had ended and before baseball season had begun… the horror! With no other sport available for bored men to watch on an inside day they tuned into the Daytona 500, and those bored men were coincidentally treated to the greatest race in NASCAR history. For stock car racing, that snowstorm turned out to be the perfect storm, as a fantastic race culminated in a last lap crash, allowing NASCAR’s only nationally recognized name, Richard Petty, to sweep through to the checkered flag. And better yet, immediately after Petty flashed across the finish line in his famous STP branded racer the cameras panned back to the wreck where two drivers were fist fighting in the infield, and still another driver had leapt out of his car to come to the aid of his brother, the three of them throwing haymakers until the service trucks could get there to pull them apart! It was glorious, this two on one melee after a fantastic race with millions of first time viewers! It was the perfect storm indeed for a second rate sport, as fans from all over America began heading down south to watch those crazy-assed southerners race their hot rods. It was the height of happiness for me to see the rest of the country embracing my favorite sport!
For a while, at least.
Then my happy bubble burst. Mom moved us further away from Dad. Worse, she moved us to the city. Trips to race tracks ended for me. City life and time changed my priorities, as will happen, turning me away from “out of sight, out of mind race cars,” and toward girls, rock-n-roll, and a car of my own. But then came cable television. ESPN and TBS began showing races nearly every weekend. I found myself drawn back in by the ’84 Firecracker 400, hearing Ronald Reagan issue the “Gentlemen, start your engines” command from a phone in Air Force 1, and then seeing in real time, albeit on television, the image made famous by Sports Illustrated of Air Force 1 cruising in to land with that iconic STP car in the foreground, racing alone down Daytona’s backstretch. It was not my luck to be able to go to the races anymore, but I’ll be damned if racing wasn’t reaching out to me and pulling me back in, or so it seemed at the time.
A few years later my buddy Dave and I got us a place down at the beach. Dave laughed at me on those hot summer afternoons when I‘d hop on my ”beach cruiser” to pedal back up to our 17th Street apartment in time to catch my heroes on TV. My asshole friend would yell, “go on then, you hillbilly fuck” as I flipped him off on my way. The bikini-clad tourists could wait, I figured. Girls would always be there, but Talledega only came around twice a year. I guess those priorities hadn’t completely changed.
I will admit to being a little bit ass-hurt when my friend called me a “hillbilly fuck,“ so I did the only thing I could do. I loaded up my truck with beer and weed, shoved Dave into the passenger seat, and I converted him; two long-hairs in cut-off shorts and Van Halen t-shirts on a NASCAR roadtrip. What a fucking blast we had! I’ll never forget the joy on his face that entire weekend. We’d been to a lot of rock and roll shows, but there is a huge and obvious difference between 18,000 headbangers at a one-night stand, and 80,000 redneck wall-bangers rockin’ a racetrack for an entire weekend. Upon arrival Dave completely bought in to the laid-back party style of it (in particular to a group of redneck girls we came across as they bathed boldly shirtless in the dangerous southern sun, Dave kindly offering to shade them with his own naked body at much hazard). And to my chagrin he also bought in to the whole “Intimidator”, “Man in Black” thing, and so became a Dale Earnhardt fan (plus he knew I hated the driver whom many fans, myself included, referred to as Ironhead, rather than Earnhardt. You have to keep in mind that Dave was, as most maturing young men are with each other, a real butt-wipe).
Our front-stretch seats for that race were low down in the stands, a bit close to the track for comfort’s sake, but perfect to hear the sounds, sense the speed, and to get caught up in the drama of it all. Dave remained skeptical of the actual racing right up through the warm-up laps, looking at me like I was an idiot when I warned him that he’d best take off his brand new Earnhardt cap before they came around again or he would lose it. You see, it takes a minute at a track like Charlotte for speed to accumulate. Heavyweight American muscle doesn’t zip off the line like a sissy little European racer does. It gathers it’s momentum slowly, needing every bit of the mile-and-a-half, high banked speedway with the dog-leg rounding out it’s start-finish line to get it’s gears sorted out. Once that space and speed is gathered however, watch the hell out!
That first lap circled about like slow motion. I looked over, unsurprised by a cynicism on Dave’s face which only made me laugh, as I knew what was to come. Like two trains vying for supremacy the twin lines of cars drove away from us down the backstretch, circling bumper-to-bumper and side-by-side-by-side through turn three, the fans in the bleachers standing in salute before the onslaught. As they rounded through turn four you could feel a difference in the air, and in the crowd, and in the concrete seat beneath you as they came, the roar from forty-three, 600 hp engines screaming angrily towards you, the cars nervously jockeying for position like a boy at the movies on a first date. Like everyone else, Dave and I were also standing now as they approach us, me screaming and waving my driver forward, Dave watching them roar past in mesmerized wonder… and blissfully hatless.
It is not a difficult game, racing, though there are nuances to know. I recall at one point Eddie Bierschwale’s car got sideways and lifted completely up off the ground as if held there by a giant, invisible hand as it flew directly towards us. I was standing and could see the car’s undercarriage, exhaust system and all as it hung like a toy in front of me. Joyful, I turned to find Dave curled up in a humorous ball beneath his seat. Yet by day’s end my rookie friend was an expert, educated in every phase of racing; driver’s, strategies, and courtesies. Having hooked my fish, those Sunday afternoons watching races alone in our little apartment became parties of two when we were broke, which was much of the time, and roadtrips when we weren’t.
They say you can’t go home again. I found this to be true. Dave and I stayed in touch after I moved to Charlotte. I even bumped into him unexpectedly at a race once. I assumed that racing was something I would always have, and that my friend Dave and I would always share it, but time is fickle, taking Dave away for good and changing my beloved NASCAR into something almost unrecognizable, with ”Cars of Tomorrow” that all look exactly alike (some are even foreign, eee-gads!) and that are unable to pass one another without difficulty. And the racetracks are mostly as alike as the cars are, besides their being spread into far away geographies where there are no hardcore fans, hence the empty grandstands in Kansas, California, and Vegas most weekends. Ticket prices have become as ridiculous as those for NFL games, and then you have these drivers with midwestern names who whine when they lose, rather than fight. Nah, me and a hundred thousand other southerners will take a pass on that.
So I am pretty much done with racing. I still turn to some of the bigger races when I am home on a Sunday, but my attention quickly wanes. Gone is the Ford and Chevy rivalry, gone are the short tracks with their noon starts, gone are the drivers in open-faced helmets having a smoke at 200 mph, gone are the kids clinging to the catch fences, and the chicken bones and soda cans tossed down to the walkways, gone are the beer brands on cars, the cigarette brand on the trophies, and the pretty girls kissing the winner at race’s end (Well, the pretty girls might still be there, I honestly don’t know. Seems a bit sexist though, for this day and age?). It seems that, as everything does, Southern stock car racing has run its course.
But that documentary, now. I’ve got to say, that was pretty darn good. The racing scenes got me going, seeing the old guard strapped in again, hammer down and hell-bent for glory. It’s a shame my old buddy Dave and I can’t load up the truck for one last NASCAR roadtrip. I’ll bet he would like that, if he was still here with us.
I know I would, just once, for old time’s sake.
Jinxed jesting jejune junior jobber...
Kooky King Kong kapellmeister
just jabbering gibberish (A - K)
Again, another awkward ambitious
arduous attempt at alphabetically
arranging atrociously ambiguously
absolutely asinine avoidable alliteration.
Because...? Basically bonafide belching,
bobbing, bumbling, bohemian beastie boy,
bereft bummer, bleeds blasé blues, begetting
bloviated boilerplate bildungsroman,
boasting bougainvillea background.
Civil, clever clover chomping, cheap
chipper cool cutthroat clueless clodhopper,
chafed centenary, codifies communication
cryptically, challenging capable, certifiably
cheerful college coed.
Divine dapper daredevil, deft, destitute,
doddering, dorky dude, dummkopf Dagwood
descendent, dagnabbit, demands daring
dedicated doodling, dubious, dynamite,
deaf dwarf, diehard doppelganger, Doctor
Demento double, declaring depraved
daffy dis(pense)able dufus Donald Duck
derailed democracy devastatingly defunct.
Eccentric, edified English exile,
effervescent, elementary, echinoderm
eating egghead, Earthling, excretes,
etches, ejaculates, effortless exceptional
emphatic effluvium enraging eminent,
eschatologically entranced, elongated
elasmobranchii, emerald eyed Ebenezer,
effectively experiments, emulates epochal
eczema epidemic, elevating, escalating,
exaggerating enmity, enduring exhausting
emphysema.
Freed fentanyl fueled, fickle figurative
flippant fiddler, fiendishly filmy, fishy,
fluke, flamboyantly frivolous, fictitious,
felonious, fallacious, fabulously fatalistic,
flabbergasted, fettered, flustered, facile,
faceless, feckless, financially forked,
foregone, forlorn futile fulsome, freckled
feverish, foo fighting, faulty, freezing,
fleeting famously failing forecaster, flubs
"FAKE" fundamental fibber fiat, fabricating
fiery fissile fractured fios faculties.
Gamesomeness goads gawky, gingerly,
goofily graceful, grandiloquent gent, gallant,
genteel, geico, guppy gecko, gabbling gaffes,
gagging, gamboling, gestating, gesticulating,
garlic, gnashing, gobbling, gyrating,
gruesomely grinning, grappling, gnomadic
giggly, grubby, gastrointestinally grumpy
gewgaw gazing gesticulating guy,
geographically generically germane,
gungho, grave gremlin, grumbling, guiding,
guaranteeing, guerilla gripped gatling guns
ginning gumpshun.
Hello! Herewith halfway harmless hazmat,
haphazard haggard, hectored, hastily,
hurriedly, harriedly hammered, handsomely
hackneyed, heathen, hellbent hillbilly, hirsute,
hidden hippie, huffy humanoid, hexed, heady,
Hellenistic, holistic, hermetic, hedonistic
heterosexual Homo sapiens historical heirloom,
homeless, hopeful, holy, hee haw heretical hobo.
Indefatigable, iconographic, iconic, idealistic,
idyllic, inimitable, idiosyncratic, ineffable,
irreverently issuing idiotic, indifferent, inert,
ineffectual, ingeniously iniquitous, immaterial,
insignificant, indubitable, inexplicable, ignoble
itches, ineffectually illustriously illuminating
immovable infused ichthyosaurus implanted
inside igneous intrusions immensely
imperturbable improbable.
Jovial jabbering jinxed January jokester
just jimmying jabberwocky
justifying jangling jarring juvenile jibberish
jubilantly jousting jittering
jazzy jawbreaking jumble
justifying, jostling, Jesus;
junior jowly janissary joyful Jekyll
joined jumbo Jewess jolly Jane;
jammed jello junket jiggled
jeopardized jingled jugs.
Kooky knucklehead klutz
knowingly kneaded, kicked, killed
knobby kneed kleptomanic.
CRYING OUT IN VENGEANCE
PROLOGUE
PLAZA MEXICO
The crowd had not yet been coaxed into frenzy, but the volume in
the largest bullring in Mexico was like a rising tide and the hum
pushed an electric buzz into the air throughout the arena.
The lancing third or the tercio de varas had begun. The bull
charged at the picador, the man atop a white and brown horse, as he
galloped by and tossed his lance into the creature’s back.
The sharp end pierced the thick hide, the bull bucked and let out
a huff of air and a moan. The man on horseback circled the bull, the
blood dripping down its side barely visible against the dark black
fur. The bull swung its head from side to side at its attacker and
then charged, its large horns grazing the peto, the protective
covering that shielded the horse from harm. The strike had been
purpose filled and if it had not been for the peto, the horse would
have been gored.
The matador stood at a safe distance continuing to watch the bull. Drawing from the animal’s movements which side the bull would favor, thus allowing him to approximate his own future attacks and defenses.
A second picador rushed in and planted a secondary lance into the
hump of muscle just beyond the bull’s neck. These stabs were not to
kill the beast, but their goal was to weaken the hard, dense muscle.
Eventually the strength of the muscles would fade and it would give the bull a considerable struggle to hold his own head high. In the
end, it would be how the animal would die, as if it purposefully
offered the neck to the matador for the killing stroke.
The matador flashed his red cape and the eyes of the bull caught
the movement and lunged after it. The matador gracefully swept the
cape aside and spun his body avoiding contact for the third time
during the bout. And the crowd roared in unison: OLE!
After a few more feints of the cape and his deft maneuvers the
second stage of the battle began: tercio de banderillas.
Three banderillas began to gain the animal’s fury as they stuck and moved and dodged the bull’s attacks. Each attempting to stab two
of their sharp barbed sticks into the shoulder muscles. Again, this is
not to kill, but to slow the beast further.
The red cape fluttered from the breeze and hand movements of the
matador and the bull engaged him again. This time the matador twisted to the opposite direction, the one that was the animal’s stronger side. A true show of courage and pierced the bull with his own stick.
The crowd thundered in their approval.
The time had come for the final part of the duel between bull and
man: tercio de muerte. The third of death. This would be the final
stand for the bull. This would be where the matador lived to see a new day and the bull did not.
Victor Calavera, the matador, entered the ring alone for what
would be the final time of the day. He was hot and perspiring greatly
from the sun above and the exertion of the contest of superiority. The
crowd cheered and he could feel the rhythmic pulse in his feet, both
from the vibrations from the crowd surrounding him and from the hoof
beats of El Rebelde. He thought to himself; the bull had been aptly
named and had put on quite a show today, but as Victor could tell the
animal had grown tired. Now was almost his time to bask in the glory
once again. He still needed to run El Rebelde down perhaps a small
fraction more, but not too much. The crowd would not be pleased if he killed a near defenseless animal, he was to show his victory over a
worthy adversary.
Another charge came and he stabbed at El Rebelde with his wooden sword. This too was for show, to indicate his prowess and to
antagonize the bull further. Rebelde ran at him again, followed by a
second and third. Now, it was time he thought. He exchanged the wooden sword for the real one, the estoque de veridad and readied himself. He initiated Rebelde, almost forcing the bull to attack and the bull complied. Victor Calavera twisted with near effortlessness and struck true as he felt the blade slide into his opponent, knowing well from experience it had entered the heart.
El Rebelde had been bested and slumped to the dirt releasing his
final breath into the earth below.
The arena had come alive. The cheers so loud and blending
together that Victor could only register a distinct whistle here and
there. He bowed to the crowd and the roar intensified. He turned and
bowed again, and then the crowd became silent. He was confused. Had he not entertained them. He opened his eyes and gazed upon the crowd. But it was evident that all eyes were fixed on one thing, and it was not him. He turned slowly and what he saw threw his mind into discord. El Rebelde was standing again. But something was different in the animal this time. He looked fresh. He looked strong. He head was held high, and his fierce eyes were glaring directly at Victor.
Gathering himself quickly, he grabbed his cape and flaunted it
about. He began thinking, perhaps his kill stroke had been slightly
off. The bull continued to stare, and then walked closer to him as if
the mere thought of charging the farthest from El Rebelde’s mind.
Victor continued to feint with the cape, Rebelde’s focus still upon
only him, the cape an afterthought. The distance had been closed to
the point where he could almost taste Rebelde’s breath and smell the
blood in the air.
The bull charged, and tilted its head down and to the left in an attempt to stab him with his horns as it would bring his head up and
to the right. Victor spun left to avoid the collision, but something
changed. But then something remarkable occurred, El Rebelde faked his movements, if that were even possible, just when his head began moving to the right the bull shifted its footing and struck to the left. The horn tore through soft flesh and Victor felt the innards of his belly shift. The horn continued rip through tissue, disemboweling him.
He felt the ground rush up towards him. He was near to the point
of passing out but managed to look up and see the giant frame of the
black bull hovering over him. He heard screaming in the distance but
it seemed so far away. He could hear voices yelling at each other. It
was the picadors and banderillas. They were coming to his aid.
It was then that he looked into the bull’s eyes, and saw something. Something that was there, and perhaps something that shouldn’t be. The eyes. They were dead eyes, as if deep inside they held, nothing. He seemed to be watching him. Watching him die. Victor had never envisioned the tables turning like this.
The bull reared up and brought the full weight of its body upon
him, crushing his chest cavity. His bones snapped like twings under
the assault.
The audience in the arena had never seen ferociousness like this. The previous frenzy had turned into hysteria as the bull continued to
trample the matador into the ground. The display didn’t stop even as the picadors and the banderillas attempted to draw his focus, El
Rebelde's attention on Victor Calavera was unfaltering. The matador’s screams had long since stopped and finally so did El Rebelde. The black beast stood unmoving in the dust cloud that had formed around him and the decimated body of Victor Calavera. Behind the brown cloudthe hollow mask of El Rebelde glared at the crowd and then as if passing through the eye of a storm; all was quiet and the bull dropped dead, for the second time that day.
This is from my current work in progress. Hopefully I can finish and publish this novel in the upcoming future.
.
You were viscously torn from the womb, ripped from the soft and subtle flesh of your loving mother.
The claws that resurrected you from the sac in her abdomen was the one of your own creation.
How did you, such a miniscule creature, and infant born of this world, manage to make such a heartless dark being of pure greed?
For it is not that you were a fetus of flesh, but you are a fetus of sin.
You are a traitor among the pure.
An anomaly in heaven.
Leave, now.
For your existence is forbidden.
Of jagged teeth, concubine of catastrophe, mark of midnight, and rivers of honey.
Four writers were approaching, and the wind began to howl...except replace wind with bloodletting of words, and ink into veins from these authors blessed and crazed with no other way to let it out, than to put it across a screen, and into our hearts with only pure aim.
Here's the link to the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s3J_TYQqaM
And here are the pieces featured.
https://www.theprose.com/post/828745/king-of-california https://www.theprose.com/post/828053/the-drug-in-me-is-you https://www.theprose.com/post/828235/mile-run https://www.theprose.com/post/828263/the-only-shore
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Puple Cat’s paw
He stretches out a paw.
Just look at him leap.
Sharpens his claws.
While the world is asleep.
Bounds over rooftops.
Out into the night.
Rips out a space time.
Squeezes in the light.
Here comes the event horizon.
Just look at him and grin.
Winks an eye
Says goodbye. And hops right in.
He saw the sky sink from the earth where you sat.
Turning back word down and round to a most auspicious star.
Crunching number into one in the flight of a falconer.
In the foaming brine he dives as fast as mill wheels strike.
On the curld clouds he rides out into the night.
But you can hear his dreadful thunderclaps as he bounds through space.
Telling matter where to be. Telling time to be a space.
The point of singularity is not something he can miss.
He opens up a universe with just one little hiss.
A Conversation.
I had just left the bar at closing time, it was cold and the night was threatening rain. A rush of wind caught me off guard and I stumbled as I made my way in the direction of the parking garage a few blocks away. My eyes were cast downward, inebriated and hardly focused. I came to a crosswalk and decided to wait out the signal, my arms were wrapped tightly across my chest to bar the cold. Glancing to my right I saw an old homeless man sitting on the concrete. He was leaning back against the side of a brick building and his bare feet were planted before him, knees elevated and arms resting casually upon them.
He was staring at me, and I felt compelled to join him. So I did.
I walked over and sat next to him, then smiled. He returned my smile but said nothing.
“You hungry? Need money for anything?” I asked.
He gave no reply, with the exception of continuing to gaze at me, that smile on his lined face. It was unnerving. A lack of comprehension was not what silenced him, that I knew on instinct. Strangely, I felt I knew him.
“Your smile is genuine. I mean no disrespect but aren’t you miserable out here in the cold?” I asked him as I felt the chill infesting my own bones.
He again answered me with silence, long enough for me to feel awkward, but eventually he did speak.
“Without darkness, one cannot truly appreciate the light,” he said, “It is the same with life. I appreciate it because I remember death.”
My smile faded as his remained. His stare was lucid, I saw no madness within it. After a moment I nodded and asked, “So you remember death? What was it like?”
His pause was not as long this time, but palpable. “You would not understand,“ he said.
“How long were you dead?” I asked.
“That question makes no sense. Time speeds up when you enjoy yourself, it slows down when you don’t. It’s only relative but had no relevance in that state,” he replied patiently. His words were delivered unhurriedly and as relaxed as his aged frame. But I sensed authority about him.
”What did you see?” I asked.
”You don’t receive any information while you are there. You are just there. Then all of a sudden you begin to feel this tremendous amount of data being shoved within you and you hear screaming. Screaming and screaming and when you realize it’s you screaming you don’t even recognize your own voice.
All you see is energy and the collective consciousness begins to take hold. It tells you that that is a wall, that this person is your mother and that one is your father. And for the briefest of moments you know it’s not true, it’s all just energy but you quickly succumb. And you forget. I, however, remember.”
I felt an ache, a dull throb deep within the pit of my stomach. It felt like the rhythm of doom. Eventually, I was able to speak.
-”Is there no escape?”-
We both said those words at the same time and that ache became an intense stab of agony. My mind flashed to something…. something that I could not understand. Desperately and possessively I clung to reality. I felt my eyes growing moist and my fist were tightly clenched.
His smile turned paternal as he said, “Go back to sleep.”
I said, “But I’m awake.”
”Go back to sleep,” he repeated.
And I did.
I went back to my routine where I feared the future and regretted the past. Where I imagined better things and sometimes I imagined worse things and life flew by as if in a dream until one day I found myself on my death bed and I remembered that conversation.
I remembered them all, thousands and thousands of the same conversation throughout an innumerable past.
I remembered, then I forgot.