alone.
"
I walked with James. Maybe that was just because I didn't care where we were going. These days I have trouble keeping aware of time. There were so many people here and so many of them were exactly the same. No surprises. We fed our inner animal things the bacteria hadn't gotten to yet- very little. Disorientation, a sense of spreading, gives off ripples of motion.
"I'm hungry," I said.
"Do you have any money."
I said I didn't.
"Then shut up."
We kept walking. He turned into an alley. I knew this place. The sights, sounds,
smells, were little pieces of sickness. It didn't smell right. Puddles of oil, black as month old shit, infested; trash, old papers, cups with nothing in them, missing a side. It was foul here, as death. James brought me here too often. He was turning into an arbiter of destruction.
I stopped him with one hand.
"We can't go back here," I said. "You know that."
"Are you afraid?"
"You owe me."
"He's your fault."
"I wont, you know. Never."
"I know."
"I've gone back too many times already," I said. "I've gone back there before." "I know."
I turned around. James played dangerous games. This would never be a good
place to write poetry.
:::::::::::::::::::: I knocked on the door. Fly patches flew, zapping in the lantern. Late nights take life and defeat it. He opened fat and bald, ugliness, drenched in ugliness, grease all over his upper lip, long twining hairs beneath his shirt. He chewed rudely. Somewhere within, I felt mildly offended. He smelled like grated cheese.
"Hello," I said.
"Who are you?" He chewed.
"I just wanted you to know," I said, "I'm the guy who broke your mailbox. And I
like to write big, colorful poems. The offensive kind. That no one understands." He looked at me blankly. He chewed. Any second he was sure to give me fury. "You're that kid that came by with the video camera."
"I am."
"I let you meet my daughter."
"I have."
Gunk bespectacled him. Thick bushels of hair sprouted dualistic, one from each
nostril. Fat must be slapping to deafness.
Just a minute ago, I'd broken his new mailbox.
Quakes of anger rumbled in him. He glared.
"Why did you come back?" he demanded.
"Because last time," I said, "you didn't understand."
::::::::::::::::::::
The alley smelled strange. No wind blew here, where it smelled like shit, where the spiders were. By the walclass="underline" a carcass leering. On some level I felt overwhelmingly evil, if I could call myself things. I longed to see the sky, not so much for peace, but a reminder of longing. Humidity is an obstacle to passing. This was not a pleasant place to possess a nose.
"Jacob?" I wondered, mocking myself.
But he was there.
Overrun,
grotesque, a nest of spiders. They crawled through tunnels in his ears, fucking
with eight legs the depths of his intestines. Arachnid colonies swarmed in him,
licking crusted remnants of blood, nibbling at veins. They'd chewed away his eyes,
along the stems leading back (narcoleptic), not the mention the spongy mass of his
brain. He had no kidneys, no lung and liver. He shat a steady stream of spiders, legs
coalescing at a symmetry point, slowly through the very pores in his skin, still
gleaming whatever epidermic remnants, liquid leavings to sick weaving muscle. At the very center, in his chest, a wicked, hairy beast with sixteen legs and fifty eyes worked appendages all throughout him, poking at soft things. It fed off cycles of
venom, recycling.
"Jacob?" sat by the dumpster, against it; sack and skin, slimed to the metal.
Unseeing, he stared. His sockets were pits of spiders. They'd eaten away his clothes,
shot venom in his soul. Working diligently, they laced him in webbing, tying down
limbs. Most probably, he ached: of vultures and sin.
He moaned.
You,
did
this to me.
If I could think of him as making a sound. With one arm barely raising, he pulled
and wanted to point, a long breaking fingernail. He struggled, vomiting streams of
spiders. Some made eight legged escapes from cranium, spreading concentric from
the center, crawling.
"Jesus," I said, and realized, once and for all. "I thought you got away, but you
never even left." The world didn't have room for him, erasing. It came with one eye
and false, false reasons, making shit excuses, to chase the wretch away. "I always
knew it," I said. "You weren't worth a try."
He moaned. From either side he'd sprouted the beginning of four new arms.
When they were done he would have eight legs. Achromatic down, gossamer,
covered him. He shook in pain. Across his forehead a gash split open. The skin slid
away over a red eye. He saw the world the color of blood. Heated, unfriendly. In
unification, we hated him.
I know
what
you're
thinking, he said.
(I hated him) In the life. He was sickening
as
wet dirt
sprouting worms
in
the rain.
He gaped with one evil eye. The dumpster flew at me.::::::::::::::::::::
James took me with him to a concert. In concert places the kids were my age. They had long hair and wore very strange clothing. They danced. Pyrotechnics wove blazing discoloration, flitting brilliantly on a crooked shoulder, the flatness, shadowing the bridge of the nose. In moving they culminated to an absolute mass of randomness, in unification.
The band sucked. They wasted space on the stage.
"Lets get out of here," I said. "You know I can't stand concerts anymore." "Yeah," he said, "I know."
::::::::::::::::::::
He yelled at me.
No, language can't capture such
disfigurement.
He shook his fist, shot spittle, and bulged uncontrollably. Still,
he didn't realize
I'd already gotten
his
mailbox.
::::::::::::::::::::
Inhaling, I dived. It was something like a commando roll, just I wasn't a commando. I landed on shards of broken glass. Still sliding (and quickly), the dumpster buckled, the hull throbbed, and it belly flopped against the wall. Handfuls of trash flung into the air- a mass of mothball, plastic bags, drain cleaner, rotten fruit, dirty boxes- and bounced against the wall. They made a wet, sopping sound, that had different layers in it; bringing to mind simultaneously puddles of rain and flushing toilets; and fell all together, with the patter of wrung paper towels, thumbing at the bottom. Flecks of blood escaped me. I cringed.