the curtain of unfinished night

God-forgotten street. Too dark, too empty, too heavy for me to stay any minute longer. Funny thing, I don’t remember how I got here, but I feel how this place wants me to leave. I want to leave it, too. You know why?

My balls are freaking freezing! But, still, where the hell am I? Old yellow street lights you’d see in movies from 90’s, a small bus-stop buses don’t stop at, a liquor (?) shop, hmm, I don’t recognize it…I guess I’ll just walk home.

Should I? I feel like killing myself now… shit, no, I haven’t married Nadene yet. Sorry not sorry. But I’ll take a walk home then.

No, no…I’m gonna kill Bill for telling me so much about ayawuasca. I can’t stop thinking about it. Wait, no, it’s spelled differently. A-y-a-h-u-a-s-ca. Ever heard of it?

Funny thing, I’ve never even tried weed. Tell this to Nadene, and I’ll shoot you. She thinks smoking it looks sexy, so no way. But smell…oh, god, it’s horrible. How do I know? Well, a friend of mine, not actually a friend, but some guy from our group, tells it is so. I trust him. He’s cool.

                        #

It’s getting harder to see the road, so I now watch my feet. But. These. Aren’t. My. Shoes.

“Ouch!”

Some guy appeared out of nowhere and pushed me in the back. What the? It’s pretty wide road, but he somehow ends up going by my side.

“Watch out, piece of garbage”.

I hear when he turns back. He looks kind of weird. Cheeky grin, two small eyes almost looking in two different directions, mustache and only a hood that looks normal.  

Damn, how rude. “Fuck yourself” I say in mind. But the way he looks at me made me (or not me) swallow my tongue and pride:

“Sorry”.

I slow down my pace and it’s get easier to see things around. It’s looks like I’ve never even taken a step. Everything looks the same as five minutes ago. Again, all I see are yellow streetlights that make me feel sick, one more bus stop, some shops across the road and nothing.

The guy in hood reaches the traffic light and crosses the road. Thank god. But why would anyone need a traffic light here? I see no cars.

​​​​​ #

It’s been like fifteen minutes since I was heading in the straight direction. It’s still dark or getting darker. I don’t even know what the time is?! It could be around five in the morning, if so,I would know it’s gonna dawn soon, or way worse, it could be two in the night, when black becomes blacker.

​​​​​ #

Wow, people here. I get to see a few of thempassing by. They all are going in an opposite direction. I see some hippie couple coming. They both seem to be wearing denim bell bottoms and have long hair. Oh, he also has knitted hat on his head.Lame.

“Hey, babe, you want join me tonight?” he says hugging a hippie girl too tight.

I don’t know why but I smile as they pass. I mean she clearly isn’t into him, like at all. Hell, even I can see that, why wouldn’t he? Her face says“I’m about to throw up”. Does he smell badly?  Ha-ha. I heard hippies use some stinky stuff as perfume. And he is definitely older than her by like hundred years.

“Yo, man, stop undressing my mamasita,” he says.

I burst out laughing. Mamasita, wahahah. Who the fuck is mamasita?

“Did I say anything funny?” I hear his voice now from the back as I pass the next market shop. I turn back to answer.

“If you ever get to save planet and git rid offevery shit, would you please to leave ayahuasca?”

I laugh again while he sticks his middle finger upat me. What the fuck, this isn’t funny at all.

Reader, please, forget this joke.

​​​​​​ #

It’s getting colder and darker here. What the hell, are we Canada now?

The road looks like it is about to end. I hope it isn’t a mirage, otherwise I’d happily kill myself. I read “DeKalb Avenue” at the crossroads to left and right. DeKalb Avenue, Dekalb Avenue..huh? What was it?

I guess if I turn to the right, I’ll probably be able to catch a cab or something.

​​​​​      #

Oh, man, my ankles hurt. Here’s why, yesterday I fell of the skateboard in front of…guess who…of course, Nadene. Oh, by the way, sorry, I didn’t tell you much about her. She is my neighbor, lives next door. She’s one year older, but who cares? I bet she loves me…so, ok, wait, I better put my hands into pockets first, so they don’t turn blue before I even told you about her.

#

Still with me? What was I telling about? Oh, Nadene, this gorgeous blonde neighbor of mine. We’ve been neighbors for half a year and I even came upwith a song for her. It starts out like heaven in your eyes make me wanna die right in your arms.  

I see her in my dreams sometimes. I know what you are thinking…you are thinking I’ve never had a girlfriend… yeah, you definitely think this way…and…and, you actually got it right. I’m turning 18 in three months and I’m still a virgin. Don’t you dare tell anyone! Guess who am I saving myself for? Yeah,but please, let’s not repeat her name, I’m getting saliva in my mouth.

Ok, now you are probably thinking I’m a weirdo or something, it’s not (yes, it is, but not in this context at least). Let me explain, say out loud her name like three times in a row:

Nadene, Nadene, Nadene and you’ll get what I mean. For the third time it obviously startssounding like some delicious French cheesecake.

“You wan grab some Nadene tonight?”

“Nope, bro, I’m feeling more like lemon cake tonight” damn it, sounds…cheesy…wahah, funny, isn’t it? (I know it’s not)

Nadene, my lovely beloved and gorgeous “mamasita” (please, pronounce it with Hispanic accent like that strange hippie dude did), I hope one day I’ll marry you, so we can run a cheesecake sweet shop and call it after your name…

Our kids will be fed with best nadene done by Nadene. Nadene & Co. Nadene, the mamasita’s sweet shop. Nadene, Nadene, …

“Nade-e-e-ene!!!!”

I did not notice screaming it out loud. She isn’t Voldemort after all.

“Young man, are you feeling alright?”

Where’s this coming from?? I look around to find the voice and see some lady looking exactly like Hillary Clinton talking right from the back. Was she following me? As she approaches, I get to see her pearl necklace and a white blazer with absolutely ugly blue stripes, no wonder she didn’t get elected. Oh, actually, they ain’t blue or are they? This ain’t Hillary, right? She suspiciously looks at me. What do I say to Hillary???

“Okay, do you want to take a seat? You look like you may need some help, I can call for…” she comes closer.

Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck! I move back away from her.She scares me now. Her smile looks weird like if she was a serial killer or something. Who’s she gonnacall? I slowly turn away and run from her.

“Don’t look back…don’t look back…DON’T FUCKING LOOK BACK!!!!!”

I run without stopping for I-don’t-know-how-much-but-much and pass the street lights like in a relay race.

Street light one…

Street light two…

Street light three…

Wo-o-ow. Now I got a bellyache and my ankles seem to be broken. Something in my eyes, shit, I can’t see anything, everything’s black…oh, no, am I blind forever? Nadene’s boobs ain’t gon be seen?

No, no, no…getting worse, something comes out of this black, snakes (?) with colorful horns. What the fuck is going on? Stop it! They start rotating and then speaking to me. I recognize no word. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I don’t know if I am standing like this for a long or not, but at some point, it stopped.

The picture began to appear like I’m in polaroid photo. Wow, actually, it’s beautiful here. I see tall trees right beside the street lights. Everything’s vibrating around.

Where am I going now?

(sorry reader, I think I gotta look around first andthen get back to you)

​​​​​     #

I now somehow feel safer, but this part of never ending street looks way more ghetto. It looks like an older place, you know? Shabby shops, shabby road.

​I turn my head to watch if any of the places is open and see something that says gre…what is it…gree…ah, “grenade” across the road near next bus stop. oh, it also has neon martini glass pictured near…I bet it’s a bar. Never seen it before, but interesting, do they check IDs? I’ll just go ask how to get home.

​​​​    #

Small place with only a few people. Looks like my basement at home, but you won’t believe me if I say it, it has these platforms for strip-dancers. I ain’t ever seen one in real, but it looks like a carton box with a stick in the middle.

I am imagining Nadene performing a dance for me. Now she takes off her blouse…yeah, keeps going...But hell, you know what, with this kind of dance platform, she’d probably fall. I don’t mean she’s fat, in fact, she’s thin, but, oh, whatever.

A DJ, Snoop Dog’s look-alike, is quietly playing some techno shit no one pays attention to (Who on earth turns on techno on such inaudible level?!).What strange is that he stares down at his table and makes no moves, but only a hand. He looks a lot like a zombie.

A woman bartender in wet white shirt is pouring martinis to two Asians sitting on old stools. I guess I could get something to wait out the pain in ankles I still feel so I go to the bar.

It turns out these guys ain’t Asians. The one in white shirt and a hat is actually black. The one sitting from right side is kinda blurred. His hair is blonde, but mustache is black. And this isn’t awoman bartender, it is man in white shirt.Something’s wrong with my sight today. I get on a stool a little away from them.

“Watch out bro, watch out!!” I hear from the bar.

What the hell is wrong with people today? Why doeseveryone keep saying that to me?

​“Why does everyone keep saying that to me??? Hey!! Yoooo…you, blonde girl in the right corner, do you think I have to watch out???”  

“Actually, if you mean Ariana, she’s sitting on the left side,” some gayish Asian (I’m sure now) in thick glasses tells right in my face. I didn’t notice him sitting near me. He grabs his green drink and leaves towards, apparently, Ariana.

​Ariana, Ariana…I take a glance at her while waiting for my drink.

(By the way, I ordered some absinthe. You know that drink that first gets burnt and then you do the classic bottom up. Make sure you try one)  

Ariana’s beautiful too. But I guess her name doesn’t resemble cheesecake, so Nadene is still into the game.

“Is this a tattoo of a tiger on your left…right…no, right, it was left…leg??” I ask Ariana.

She sits away from me, but I guess I made sure she heard me.

​“Geez, why don’t you…” her red lips start moving back and forth while her eyes roll. I didn’t hear the rest of what she said cuz this damn Snoop Dog decided to play on my nerves by turning up his crap music, but her face told me everything. So, apparently no tie between her and Nadene anymore. She isn’t that beautiful, by the way.

​Something inside tells me I should be going, but my legs won’t work. This bartender guy just does my drink I’ve totally forgotten about…oh, here goes the show, he takes the lighter and burns the inside of the glass with blue drink in it. He gently twists the glass and watches my reaction. “Wow” is all I said.

​As soon as he finished his show (and I bet he used this oh-look-how-awesome-bartender-i-am trick to pick up this Asian guy, who returned back for another drink just in time), I bottom-uped it…

“Awwww!” It.burned.my.throat.

​I feel like I’m about to throw up… Oh, I just remembered I had some mint gum left that Nadene gave me this morning, so I take it from my back pocket. It’s gonna take some time till I don’t feel like throwing up.

Morning, morning…so what happened this morning? I don’t think I have any clue. Oh, wait, I can see something: here we are me, my friend Bill, Nadene and a guy, a friend of Nadene sitting on a couch in someone else’s flat. We all are having fun while drinking and playing some sort of board games.Nadene and Bill giggle much what I didn’t like, y-e-e-e-s, I think my memories of this day are coming back cuz I see a clearer pic…

“Pretty boy, how did your drink go?” thisbartender suddenly asks while wiping the glasses. I look around, less people left.

“Pretty well, but…but, um, I feel sick”.

“Burned your throat, didn’t it?”

“It did”.

“Give it five minutes and your world’s gonnarock, here’s my number, by the way” he leans on the table and hands me some scratch of paper with numbers on it. I can smell his perfume.

“Oh, I, no you got me wr…” my eyes close for a sec.

​​​​​#

I open my eyes. I am outside. What the fuck is going on in here? I look around - no one. Nothing can be seen in here. Where’s that bar? “Garage”? “Green something?”

I look down, I’m sitting on the ground. And Ifeel a deadly smell out of somewhere. I look over my cloth, ew… my shirt is filled with something, probably puke or blood or both. Is it mine? Sorry, reader, I didn’t expect that either.  What’s going on in here? It’s getting harder to open my eyelids.I don’t do that anymore. It’s so quiet that I start speaking out:

“Home, home, ho-o-o-me”. But I guess if anybody was around he’d only hear some mumbling.

Then everything stopped.

​​​​​#

​I see my mom in our kitchen making pancakes. She’s wearing her old apron and smiling and laughing while flipping the pancake. Everything is different in here. I see kitchen table with lots of different dishes. Everything I love is in here: pancakes, lasagna, clam chowder, pickled sandwich and cheesecake.

​“Mo-om!” I call her out. She doesn’t look at me. Why? I approach her and lay my hand on her shoulder. Why’s she shorter than me? She looks at me and smiles.

​“Fuck!!”. This isn’t my mom, this is Nadene!!

​“Nadene, what are doing in here? Nade-e-ene!” I tease her hand over and over. She doesn’t respond.

​Wait a second, I look around, it’s not our kitchen anymore. It looks like backyard.  I can see swings my father built for me when I was like five, a self-made sandbox, his old red Ford in the garage. I don’t get it, I come closer to check on everything. Swings are wet, it rained recently. I touch sand in the sandbox, it feels like a cookie dough in my hands. God, God, what’s happening?

​I decide to enter the house, it looks the same, but the porch is bigger than usual. I guess my father built an extension. I enter the hallway, it starts smelling like pancakes here.

​“Mom? Dad? Nadene?!!” my voice trembles and I feel it.

I decide to go upstairs to my old room. I see posters on the wall of ten year ago. Then a Star Wars poster near the door of my room. A sign that says “No enter” is hanging on the door. Everything is the same. I start feeling better.

I enter the room to check on it too and see my old bed occupied by a little boy.

​“I wanna pee, mom!!!!!” he screams. Did he notice me? He seems not to. I come closer to him. Who is this strange boy? I don’t recognize him.

I hear the door opening.

​“Hey, sweety” says my mom without looking at me.

I’m home.

​