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THERE WAS THE HIBERNATION OPTION. ANTICONSUMERIST, neo-Stalin types had recently devised a hibernation stance as the best strategy for sticking it to God and man alike. Going to sleep for the winter would not only fuck with the local economy but also derail the food conspiracy. A secret combination of over-the-counter flu medications and wild native herbs was developed to send the “Brown Bear” into a blissful state of anti-consciousness for anywhere from three weeks to two months. During this time other “Raccoons” would be on hand to turn and tend to the slumbering BBs, basting them in disinfectant every five days and adjusting the canvas swaddling as the swelling came and went. Whole networks of abandoned office trailers and rural outbuildings were converted into hibernation storage facilities, including the long-standing, notorious “Motel Hell” in Truckee at the top of a hill overlooking Donner Pass. The compound was guarded by vigilante armies of medicine skaters, armed with crossbows, stationed in bunkers surrounding the hill. The main building housed an indoor spray-paint-crusted swimming pool, and was once a spa complex that had gone to seed long before any of this current nonsense came about.
Some would call you crazy for thinking that you could end the war just by going to sleep, by living self-consciously off the grid. Who would have thought you could turn your back on your town and everything else, turn off the lights, rip the mailbox out of the ground, and hunker down under the sweaty, swollen posture of hibernation? It was an option so few were willing to ever conceive. No food no walking no thoughts of escape. None of it necessary. They were a few of the undead who had decided to stop moving and just sleep it out — not to die for real, but try to live in the lands resting on the other side of their quiet minds. They’d forged their own key out of a visionary narcissism and magically it fit the lock; their lungs sopped up the air that languished and strained at tight dozing skin. So many other solutions had been attempted and yet they had failed. No one ever got it right. The dream was over, so they retreated from the highways and streets of their regions, rooted around in the scrap heap for shavings and supplies and fell into a deep winter sleep that has lasted these many, many months.
Yet here I am, looking for animal signs, traces in the forest, in the city. Little bodies un-buried, un-earthed, in that vague place between two worlds… Traveling toward 3 a.m. Chevron restroom. Little birds crusted with dirt sitting on the ledge, too heavy to fly. The building was buried halfway up to the window. I looked outside with two dry corneas taped to my face, woozy, gradually sinking into an awareness like blood that has been replaced, drained, and replaced with a different fluid that preserves life forever while at the same time it prolongs dying to a punishing slow, eternal pace. Are there other physical signs as well? Marks made on the inside? It is an ongoing process, becoming resolved to this fate when the boxcar bed, forest burrow, and abandoned car are the most enticing places to be filled with longing for a low sleep… Surfacing up into the bright light of 7-Eleven. A little dawn slashed through the membrane of eyelids stinging with the aroma of stale sweets, but brought no actual day. Surfacing up through layers of thick air into more and more daylight, reaching a moment of clarity at the end of yet another rope. There were lots of lost whispered things around. Lots of deaths. Clumps of raw cat meat rested on countertops… On stage at some rock club a fat Nazi motherfucker squawks “I’m gonna rape you” over and over as all the hobos at the bar pump their fists and look at me with their white shiny eyes… “gonna rape you rape you rape you rape you.” He huffs ahkkshhit fukkkin you goddamn gerls around on stage before diving into a handful of sticky tables surrounded mostly by drunk people barfing all over each other. He dives in and immediately starts yanking down on any flesh he finds in there. Making out with men and girls alike before guys with mallets descend on him. He screams and barfs at the same time. The stage is cleared and sawdust is sprinkled liberally to catch the dampness that has receded into the corners during the set. It solidified into tan crusty rocks and ants started moving all their belongings into the crevices. I watched in disbelief from a remote perch high in the rafter beams. I gagged a little. That came from a pure place. At the end of the night the only remaining people in the bar stood ankle deep in underwear that was scattered all over the floor. They waded around in it, looking for change and their keys. White patches caught drips, made a nice bedding material for fallen beer bottles.
The city smelled like a wet paper bag. That great big dirty rag hung up in the sky, casting a shadow over the middle of town. A motel was strangely and inexplicably equipped with a smokestack and it spit streams of pigeon-shit colored smoke up into the sky. Inside the reception area had remained basically untouched for 35 years. Other than a mess of coffee mug rings aging the coffee table like rings on a tree, the place was a crypt unmassaged by time. There was a lady at the desk and several fans set blowing against each other in the corner of the office behind her. I could smell her teeth from across the lobby. She sat at the desk behind a life-sized bust of what appeared to be herself rendered in popcorn. This is what happens when local color stays in one place for too long. They begin attracting the attention of the local “craftspeople.” And then the local newspaper comes out and they have to do a human interest story about it, about her and that big famous roll of spun pigeon shit on top of her head. A newspaper article clipped and hung in a frame on the wall next to the bust outlined the general story, for the curious. The lady was an institution. Bustworthy, even. The article itself was 23 years old, making that popcorn way past edible. But who’s counting when it comes to a popcorn bun sitting on top a popcorn lady’s head? Looking more closely around the room I noticed bite marks covered the armchair I was sitting in. I waited for the legitimate motel guests to finish up in the snack room where the morning’s complementary breakfast was still laid out. I stopped the door from closing with my foot and scooped up most of what was left into my mouth: some random pastries, a bagel/donut (couldn’t be sure which). The coffee was horrible, just lazy… I drank it anyway. I needed my medicine.
In the middle of the forest little brown birds spat up sticky beads of phlegm on a dark forest trail. I took care to walk around them before settling into a bush at the crest of a cold stream. Wayward girls like me wandered all over town looking for answers. They spent hours on their face in gas station bathrooms, refracted in dark mirrors that shattered on the planes of their clear flesh. Rockabilly girls are the most expressive of all creatures, all eyelashes and twisted red mouths, brows straining to gather up at the center of their foreheads as they muffled a sob and begged to be kissed while the band played behind them. He didn’t hear it… Just sitting next to the bag of bones I could feel the power of them all rattling in my chest. They clicked together in subtle tones and squeaked and clacked incessantly as my eyes bulged out of my head.
“What’s wrong with me?” they asked over and over again.
Twisted songs from gigs, all those basement war dances, filtered back to me. All the haunted, huddled forms reclining and pumping fists and they turned around and they had skulls for faces, wrapped in broken bits of rope. All the blood that sloshed around inside their heated, bloated bellies, each cell bursting at the seams screaming flying, flung dirt clods reaching the rafters. Sizzling boots scraping fried dirt-clod scraps, burnt flesh smashed into the floor. The floor was so sticky. Madness… shelter-less, frigid… slimy confines trapped up inside a jellied casement huddled screaming. Tearing at our scars. We never stopped dying all those nights ago in the Northwest. Remember how we sang? Remember how we danced? How we fell and lost our lives? Remember those who got cut down, who got left dying on the grass, in the sun? What do you see when you look at one another now — tell me, little boy, where will you run?