lantern soul chapter 12 with some revisions.

"Hallelujah! Oh, the oppressive engine of the anarchist miracle." Said Blind Joe Death. "the self-righteous surrender of the universally excepted symbolic right of passage."

 

He was throwing his arm around Apollyon, Saying, "you got laid, kid, your only thirty. That's not too embarrassing."

 

"who is this weirdo?" Said Rachel.

 

"Who me?" Said Mr. Blind, pointing at himself. "she talking about me?"

 

Apollyon was silent. Reserved, reluctant, or possibly even scared.

 

"You ain't bad though, firm pouty lips, and nice fat tits." He kissed her, copping a feel. She was smacking at him with loose flailing hands. "Oh, come on, baby, don't be like that."

 

"Apollyon, who the fuck is this?" Said Rachel.

 

"He is me." said the sad, dispirited self-reflection of blind joe death.

 

"I mean, she is a little round in the middle, But I could get behind that if you know what I am saying." Said the soon-to-be-explained Rome at the end of the road of Apollyon's life.

 

"I am pregnant, you creepy old piece of shit," Rachel screamed.

 

"at least that explains them fat ankles..." Said, Mr. Blind. Then with a cigarette in its holder, He lit up and smoked as he crooned. A solid block of steel microphone like something from a forties boxing match in his other hand as a spotlight shown from overhead.

 

The song of an anarchist miracle

"My baby got fat ankles, tired, and on her feet.

My baby got fat ankles.

Because she's in love with beef."

 

He was then dancing like a Fleischer brother cartoon. Backward cartoons sliding backward, there is the illusion of ice skating on the floor of the diner. Skeletons are ripping it up in a chorus line as he continues.

 

"From somewhere in Illinois to Knoxville, Tennessee. My baby loves to travel even if it's on her knees."

 

Rachel was blushing, covering her ears one hand like a plunger to each. She closes her eye and screamed. And when she opened them, The dancing skeletons were gone—only her, Apollyon, and Mr blind.

 

Apollyon was crying again. He was huddled over arms wrapped around his eyes.

 

"look what you did," said Rachel hugging Apollyon.

 

"I made myself cry," Said Mr. Blind.

 

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" said Rachel.

 

But there was no response other than quiet weeping. The diner looked like that nighthawks at the diner painting—all, chrome and sad. The colors were all drowned in Desperatetion and longing. We found security in the failure of the world to dictate meaning to us. That security was our weakness, the desire to assert ourselves to the universe as if it required any of us.

 

We leave them now, laid out, one pregnant and innocent, comforting the seed of destruction, the other undeveloped but aware that he will be someone else when mature. At the end of the tunnel, someone or something will be judgeless with paranoia as the glue we are all getting high off of.