a small story

She walks out, leaving forever, says, "I'm doing you the biggest favor in your life."
I roll over and fall asleep, the pillow still wet from her tears.
I'm awake at 2am in an insomniac fit.
All the drinks are empty.
At least a dozen vacant bottles.
So I walk to the corner market and I'm the only customer in the store.
I have a tiny cart and put ten bottles of Wild Turkey in it.
Then I grab an extra bottle.
At the checkout, all those little impulse items, I take a package of condoms and some beef jerky.
The cashier asks me if I have ID.
I show it to him and notice he only reads the birthdate.
The cashier asks me cash or credit.
Credit.
The cashier asks for my ID again.
He just reads the name and makes sure it matches the card.
No one ever looks at the picture.
I leave, pushing my little cart down the street.
Two cops pull over, one fat and one short and ask to see my ID.
Do I have a choice?
They run it through a machine without even looking at it.
No warrants, they say, but just in case, what's in the bags.
Eleven bottles of Wild Turkey, some condoms and some beef jerky, I say.
I think this guy is a pervert, the short cop whispers, loud enough that I can hear.
What are you, some kind of pervert? the large one asks.
I plead the 5th.
The cops take me down to the station, sirens blaring.
They say it's just in case.
For several hours they grill me with questions about murdered people.
All I know is what I read in the papers, I say.
This isn't the guy, the one cop whispers, still not quite quiet enough.
You aren't the guy, the other cop says, arms crossed.
The short cop holds up a black and white mugshot.
This man, fat cop says, has been causing terror all over town.
He's killed eleven people already, the other cop mutters.
We thought you were him.
There is a likeness, I say, but how did you get his photograph if you don't know his name?
You can go, says the fat cop.
Can I have my groceries back? I ask.
You can have one bottle.
That's all I need.
I'm forced to walk back to the hotel, about five miles from the station.
I decide to drink.
By the time I have finished half the bottle I start having paranoid delusions that around every corner, down every filthy alley is the serial killer.
I imagine my doppelganger stabbing me with long sharp fingernail knives.
Deep into my neck he thrusts until the blades poke out the other side.
Each step increases my paranoia and my pace, until I am running for my life down empty streets.
It's very quiet.
Then I trip and fall flat on my face.
The Wild Turkey bottle shatters and inch long slivers stab into my neck.
The alcohol seeps warm into my jacket.
I pull the glass out painlessly and I don't bleed much.
The sun rises the moment I return to the hotel.
I go back to my room, which has been cleaned by the maid.
There is a tiny mint on my pillow.

wearedriving

We are driving.
Roadtrip.
That kind of thing.

A previous argument has disabled everyone in the vehicle.
No one wants to speak and the driver is especially uncomfortable.
I sit in the back seat and stare out the window.
It’s dark as electrical tape outside, the only light from the high beams that bounce off the road in front of us.
I’m too wired to sleep.
Everyone else is wide awake as well, unable to ignore each other.
And so goes it.

The driver decides, to fill the silence, turns on the radio.
Ticking through the channels like a worried teleprompter, he tries to discover a station that plays music everyone likes.
Not likely.
But besides that, all he can locate is static.
STATICSTATICSTATIC.

The passengers – and me – are getting sick of this white noise.
It’s no substitute for conversation.
Until –
the driver discovers a voice.

It says, T-MINUS 1 HOUR 3 MINUTES
And then static again.

A minute later.
T-MINUS 1 HOUR 2 MINUTES.
And then static again.

We’re still silent in the car, but we’re all sitting upright, waiting for the lulls in the nearly endless static sea.
Still silent to each other.

T-MINUS 57 MINUTES.
The cold voice of a computer echoing in our little box.
A sign says, 50 miles to somewhere.
Destination isn’t important anymore.

T-MINUS 49 MINUTES.
Still waiting.
No explanation.
No reasoning behind any of it.

We’ve mostly forgotten the argument, but not the anger.
We’re retaining that at least.
I think the argument was something about . . .

Existence.

T-MINUS 33 MINUTES.
. . . and counting, one of us whispers.
No one else speaks. The static is enough for us.


And we just kept driving.
Just kept going.
And going.

And going.

Sea Cucumber

These things take planning, but I wasn't prepared for this.

I love the way my eyes swell in the morning, crusted so bad I have to peel them open. I love the bloodshot hopelessness in the worm-like veins. The tears that choke in the corners and the sporadic dilation in the morning sunlight. Like my eyes are rotten grapes bleeding wine.

I love the aching I get in every tired, pulled muscle of my damaged frame. The way my bones crinkle with weight and age. The way my mouth is dry as sand and the way my teeth throb with cavities.

I'm not kidding. It really makes me happy.

I made myself anorexic just last week. For fun. I'm not really concerned that I'm fat, I just want to be disgustingly thin. Like a living skeleton, sucking and smoking thin little cigarettes. I want my bones poking out my back like dragon skin. Like a dead lion, the ribs wrapped in tattered flesh. I want it to hurt to masturbate.

After a big meal of blueberry pancakes and orange juice and bagels with cream cheese and some chocolate bars I use a toothbrush and massage my epiglottis. It's sore and cancerous, but soon my gag reflex is stimulated enough that I puke my guts out, disgorging viscera like a sea cucumber. My salivary glands are swollen and dry. I think some of what I regurgitate is blood, but who knows. That gag reflex feeling is beautiful. I'm pulling myself apart.

I love this.

The brown-red barf swirls down the bowels of the toilet bowl and into oblivion, like this never happened. I feel tired all of a sudden and lay on the tile, focusing in and out on the ceiling light. The sporadic dilation in the florescent sunlight.

Some of the bile splattered on the magazines next to the toilet paper, smearing the ink of a weight loss book. The title screams "LOSE 30 POUNDS IN SIX WEEKS!"

Five more weeks to go.