Two aliens appeared before me in the corner. Their heads shaped like windmills.
Purple fog at their feet. They dressed in shirts that hung off one shoulder and I could see their bra straps.
They showed me the weapon of the apocalypse. Three shapes.
I shut my eyes and went to the deepest door in my brain and opened it and touched the darkest ink. They told me if I didn’t get away, I would die.
I checked my ass again.
For as long as I was awake, I was convinced that I was shitting on the floor.
DRYWALL
I woke up and stepped out onto the porch. The ice in the trees let light through and skeletons coming up over the tops of the section 8 housing was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I felt new.
Charlie was leaning into the guts of the Mustang. Hood propped up and buckling with the wind.
When he saw me he stopped what he was doing and turned.
“What’s the big thing?”
“What big thing?”
“Shane. What Shane was talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever it is, don’t do it.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious. I love my cousin. But that motherfucker is nuts. Before you met him, he was in prison. Do you know why he was in prison?”
I just wanted to look at the ice on the trees. “No.”
“He came home one day. He had this big pit bull. While he was gone, the pit bull had eaten a chunk out of his drywall. So he dragged the thing out onto his front yard and beat it to death.”
I kicked a rock off the porch. I suddenly realized how cold it was.
Charlie wiped his black hands off on a rag. “Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
THAT’S THE WAY
Last Call hosted a fake orgasm contest.
We got drunk and headed over. Shane entered and sat down looking pleased with himself. I tried to picture him murdering a dog. He stuck his split tongue out at me. I could maybe see it. Charlie had been quiet all day. He kept with that vibe at the bar.
Shane said, “I found out this morning that Cassandra’s boyfriend has been beating on her.”
Charlie said, “She’s a stripper. That’s part of the job.”
Shane said, “I invited the entirety of the Comanche bloods over to his house tonight. Told them it was a big party. Lots of beer.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Shane had a way about him.
Some of the contestants were very good. The young girls imitated what they’d seen in porn, which was fine by us. An old woman with big hair and a sparkly Eiffel Tower shirt moaned monotone and said, “That’s it. That’s the way.”
We repeated that throughout the night. “That’s the way.”
Shane got up and took the mic. Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” faded into the background. He said, “Ah! Awe, shit. Sorry about that.”
Everyone went wild.
He sat back down and we killed more beers and he leaned over to me and said, “We’re gonna sell hippy crack at the Rage Rave down in Texas.”
“Yeah?”
“I got the nitrous from a local. We’re gonna go down there and they’re gonna give us two grand each.”
Charlie looked over at me, his beer poised halfway between the table and his face.
A large woman lay on her back on the stage with her legs in the air and yelled, “Fuck me till I go back in time. Right there. That’s dead center. Right on the money!”
I said, “Hell yeah. I’m in.”
HIPPY CRACK
Rockville was two gas stations and a post office. Farmland. Tobacco fields out to the horizon. The festival sprung up from the sparse trees. Steel spires and flashing neon lights and girls in belly shirts, their skin painted pink. Boys with no shirts at all. Hyperventilating kids lay prone in the bitch tent, EMTs asking them if it felt strange when they touched their arms. I bought a funnel cake.
I inhaled a balloon before going out to sell. Curiosity. Everything went white and my head rang and then it was gone.
Five dollars for this?
Shane inhaled one every fifteen minutes or so. He’d giggle and I’d tell him to focus.
I didn’t try to make sense of the appeal. No point. White people are smiling enigmas.
The unwashed masses had lined up through the parking lot, this long snake, and I filled their balloons, took their five or made change, and they’d inhale it right there, some of them stumbling, flaccid Mohawks plastered against their young faces already going tight and lined with abuse.
I saw most of them two, three times. Everybody seemed to sweat under the cool sun. I shed my hoodie early in the day, but once night fell I went back and put it on. Texas weather swinging.
At the end of the day we left the empty canisters in the parking lot and walked to our car. Set the heavy bag of cash in the floor and covered it with our backpacks. We sat down and started the car. We saw the women moving toward the rave, the cutoff shorts and long legs and smooth skin, and I turned the car off.
Thought about it.
We went back through security and into the party.
I bought a beer from a vendor and watched a DJ play a set. Kids in giant glowing fish costumes walked by on stilts. Hippies rode tandem bikes. Women hula hooped and men wore gloves with LED tips, spinning them, the colors flashing. I drank another beer.
We decided to roll.
Three minutes to find a kid with a backpack. Little green X pill down the hatch.
The bass swept over and through me. My chest expanded.
Shane scampered off to the foam machine.
I wandered.
A giant, hairless man stood in a field between two large Tesla coils. He held a metal rod in each hand. Arms outstretched. Webs of current flowing through him. The coils cracked and buzzed. He smiled electric blue.
I popped gooseflesh and felt the music. It rained and I shivered and I was a creature inside of a tree in a bed of mud in a rainforest. The women passed me and I could feel the tightness of their bellies and I could picture their faces twisted and how I could take them in my hands and lay them down.
I went to piss in a port-a-john and my legs shook. Zipped up, sure that I’d wet myself. And then I was sure that the port-a-john had blasted off into space and that if I opened the door I’d fall back to earth. Stayed cooped in there forever, steady breathing, trying to convince myself it would all be okay. Folks banging to get in.
When I finally opened the door, the ground rippled like the ocean and I stumbled through the tangles of bodies and saw young men and women lined along the fence. I joined them and vomited with them and saw the stars swirl in tight whirlpools, the last little bit down the drain forever over and over.
Shane laid his hands on the fence and hurled. He looked at me with eyes as wide as a child’s. “There was something wrong with that X.”
We stumbled back to the car.
Out my windshield, I saw the music festival disappear and reappear, blinking in and out of existence like a turn signal.
SPIDERS
I dreamt I had a son. I called my mother and told her. I went shopping and the kid was in a stroller. He looked just like me. Then he turned into a tiny blue and red spider and a dog came out of nowhere and ate him, so I shoved my hands down her throat and made her throw him up. I woke up sifting through the pile of vomit, wondering how I was gonna tell my mother that she wasn’t a grandma anymore.
HE SAID A CLOUD