The blizzard hijacked the city. Buses stuck, wheels spinning in the middle of the street. Subways frozen underground indefinitely delayed.
“What do you say when you meet someone that changes the entire course of your life?”
{XLIX}
DEAD AIR BELOW THE BYGONE bridge, I was street level staring at the tires of the parked cars. Missy and Chiara were nowhere to be found. The gouged tunnel exposed her blue steel underbelly filling with carnival echoes. Distorted voices multiplied. The decipherable few were all too familiar.
“It’s a hundred-degree day and you’re shivering.”
“Does that hole in your throat make you cold Farrow?”
“I got some gashes in the past, but that beauty is unreal.”
“It’s time to give her up Farrow.”
“Don’t nod. Don’t say a word.”
“We inked your statement already.” Sgt. Bethany Powers chewed on her words. She seemed to be missing a couple of teeth from the car accident.
“All you need to do is sign Farrow.” Detective Anderson had a bandage around his head like a bandana. He placed the pen in my hand. It rolled out of my grasp onto the sidewalk.
“Missy… Missy… are you there?” At first, I could only hear my own voice.
“…Aksa jo zwyiecslizon…” I couldn’t make out what she was saying through the static.
“Missy…” I squinted down at her photo on the lcd cellphone screen.
“…faskl asdfil diljasfzi…” She was so close to being there: But just wasn’t.
Sgt. Powers’ hands around my throat brought me out of the shock. My blood was all over her green leather gloves. Her fingers dug into the wound, pressing the loose flaps of skin together. “I can’t give you any more of my time. I got spacecases, nihilists, and the working man trying to do each other in so they can all wake up and shop another day away.” She was talking crazy. I grabbed at her neck forgetting my left hand was half missing after Detective Anderson blew a hole in it. Unleashing a cruel chop, the redhead smacked my stump away, quickly pinning it down with a black boot heel. Agony surged through me. I grabbed at Sgt. Powers with my right hand, but only got a pointy tit. I squeezed as you would squeeze one of those stress balls. I could feel her nipple harden below her blouse. It relaxed me until she jammed an open hand into my teeth. My head jerk backed. The wound on my neck spread.
Pop! Detective Anderson cracked Sgt. Powers in the back of the head with his nightstick. The blow was so hard her face went blank a few seconds. Detective Anderson seemed to be still deciding if he should hit her again as she came to. Dazed, Sgt. Powers tried to hand Detective Anderson the pen, but he wouldn’t take it. Instead he motioned for her to give it to me personally. She pressed the tip of the pen in the center of my right palm until I was able to handle it. Detective Anderson pulled the statement out of his pocket and held it steady for me. The world was fading in and out. Breaths were hard to come by. Wheezes came easy.
“Don’t nod. Don’t say a word. Write it Farrow. Write it.”
{L}
THE COPS LEFT ME ALONE to die on the street. I couldn’t remember if I signed the statement or not. The pen was still in the gutter, which I guess could be a good sign. I tried speaking. Nothing came out. It was strange to have no voice. I held my hand up and stared through the hole in my palm. The top half of my body had lost most feeling. I could only move my legs. I kicked my legs up, bouncing my feet on the pavement as they passed. The tunnel was a chamber of sound.
I could hear footsteps and gossip blend together. A couple’s outline flashed down the sidewalk across the street. I could hear them cough and shuffle along. They were coming closer. I flopped wildly like a fish in the sand. Our eyes met. I pleaded for an ambulance. They looked away wishing their eyes were playing tricks on them. Wishing they were blind and belonged to a different world.
“Farrow will you stop leaving these fucking pages everywhere.” Missy rolled the vacuum over the pages I left on the floor.
“I’ll write them again. Next time they’ll be even better.” I was lying sideways. Exhausted after a long night’s voodoo possession. Watching the vacuum gag on the pages, should’ve made me sick, but instead brought me pleasure.
“You’re a demented child scribbling on everything you see. Look at me. Don’t you like women anymore? You used to want me. Now all you love are books. All you lust for. Sober up Farrow. You exist here. Streets aren’t paper. Skies aren’t computer screens. People’s hearts don’t beat to the rhythm of typewriters.”
Missy’s fingers stayed perfectly still as she held the needle under the plastic lighter’s blue flame. Gently, she pressed the tip of the needle against my skin. It fell below leading the thread to follow in loops. After a rapid barrage of stitches, her whole body tensed up theatrically, leaving the job half done.
Scanning the area, Missy gravitated towards the pen until it was in her hand. She placed it in her mouth, loosening the tip with her teeth. With a flick, she tossed the vial of ink in the street. Resting the empty pen on my chest Missy began feeling around below my wounded throat, stopping in the soft valley of skin below my Adam’s apple. She jabbed the scissors in, quickly throwing them to the side. Next she held it the empty pen up, carefully positioning herself. I was lost in the pen’s beauty.
Air returned into my lungs. As it spread blissfully through my body, I noticed Chiara still on Missy’s back. She didn’t seem bothered by the sight of me. Just the opposite she reached out towards me with a silly smile as Missy tied the remaining stitches to close the wound on my neck.
{LI}
THE RISING SUN BLED THROUGH the two small windows of the ambulance. The stretcher and cabinets filled with medical supplies rattled bouncing its way through the bumpy streets.
“What do you make of that pen in his neck?” A thick woman spoke in a loud voice that could send a rabid bear back into the brush. Her tattooed partner shrugged jabbing me with a needle. “You’re feeling good now. Aren’t you?”
I tried to motion to them that the pen stuck in me was the only way I could breathe, but my body was completely paralyzed. Whatever they used to sedate me had the stopping power to freeze a lioness mid-growl. The garbage came on to me as a faux spiritual revelation. Some kind of pharmaceutical soft passage not worth knowing. My mind was stalling. The world that started spinning so fast, slowed down warping words. Whether they were meant directly for me or not - the words hung in the air. Naked skydivers sucked the wrong way from gravity… propelled towards far away planets… when they were only planning to come back home.
“Those stiches creep me out.”
The driver came around to swing the doors open. They hopped out of the back of the ambulance almost spilling me out on the curb. People stared, eyes widening and faces contorting as the paramedics rushed me into the hospital.
Observing for a second before pouncing, a triage nurse hung over me like a knockoff bag salesman on a Canal Street.
“What’s his deal?”
“Throat was slit. Lost a lot of blood. Need to bring him right in.” The freckled paramedic talked tough expecting resistance.