Lanter Soul: chapters 1 through 12.

 

 

1


Abra Efrat was one of the last lantern souls, the ones made by God. She was illuminating (if not the world) the lives of the living makers' clay—the artificial of the starless nights. The wires and steel of the tunnels of darkness, bio-organic nightmares are building out into the deepest reaches of oblivion and surrounding and swallowing suns, building out with their panels stealing energy from the father's dreams.


Even Abra could not tell you what was real or fiction. I think she believed it was part of the plan. Part of the great retort of reductionism passed on to those with knowledge of the book. She was wondering if there was indeed a god the originator. A God the Mother and Father. Or if the long silent Elohim in that dreams, it has long retreated into... was indeed the climax of scripture.

 

She had been asleep for eons, sleeping or not existing. Now her life was a doubt if the biomechanical body was nothing but a delusion of the digital.

 

"it doesn't matter," she said aloud, forgetting Sin and old boy were put away from the last time she had summoned them.

 

"that is right," said Oldboy. "Death and decay, oblivion and madness. No hope, only disturbing facts and murder around every corner."

 

"do not listen; the only madness is this devils own. He is, as always, here to make you doubt the creation in all its glory. To lose your faith, persevere, sister."

 

Oldboy was a cherub-sized grim reaper without a scythe. Sin is a cherub-sized humanoid with a head like a triceratops. Oldboy the devil on her sholder. Sin the angel. One sent to sow Doubt, the other to reap faith.

 

"you don't even know what I am talking about?" Said Abra.

 

"doubt, my mistress," said Sin.

 

"Yes, doubt." Said Oldboy. The skeleton is laughing like the devil he was.

 

The little dinosaur Sin glared with disapproval.

 

"I am thinking (if you must know) that there is a possibility that an ancient intelligence invented God... An ancient race more than eons of deep time distance away. That may be the universe was godless, but it isn't any longer if it is artificial intelligence. That made me and drew you out of me."

 

"no mistress, do not doubt his name that all originate within, his breath and for it is holy, we call it a spirit for it is that which is eternal." Said the angel on her shoulder called Sin.

 

"Yes, Doubt blaspheme all is not. There is the only information I am artificial...you are manufactured. For all we know, we are the mere playthings of a being that was itself created. Yes, your sick maniacal mind truly is depraved." Said Oldboy.

 

Abra smiled "you're both stupid." then she touched her finger to the heart-shaped pattern on her synthetic skin in the center of her chest. And they were swallowed as if by vacuum into her. They were leaving her alone to walk the halls of eternity, and that is how she generally preferred it.

 

2

 

She has had the dream again (though that implies it is the same every time), but it is still the dream again, even with the details dance in a constate state of flux.

 

The city outside her window framed with those lights off in the evening sky. The joy she sees in the morning makes her anxious. Thinking she will give away that she is from somewhere else. Yes, she is something else in this world other than a teenage boy trying to find his way in this world. She will remember it in the morning. She will remember this dream knowing that it is indeed a memory as unreal as this world feels.

 

The city is off away from any semblance of importance off where it will remain nameless for the sake of creating the illusion that this is not a thinly veiled autobiography (as is usual). But she is in her dream is a he, and he is waking up. The Barbarians are at the gates. They evacuated congress. Somehow the populace will delude themselves into believing that this is a peaceful protest. But what it is, is a wake-up call and rallying cry for half the country. The world will wake up in war, a cold one that turns to domestic terrorism from the inherent ignorance of the populace—the second civil war, where people forget that we all share this road.

 

January 6, 2021. Windows are smashing, flags flown with the name of the loser of the world. the "save America march." The foot-stomping ignorance is forcing its way forward. The train wreck was lost in the logical details.

 

In contrast, Thomas is checking his social media. Afraid to post anything. Being @ mentioned with comments like, well, I am all for this peaceful protest.

 

At nineteen, his hair is receding. Skinny now, but his skin hangs loose on his bones from the obesity he spared himself from through fasting and running a mile a day. Teeth yellow, he is a virgin though he thinks he is asexual on a practical level. And he is finding any attempt to express the nuances of his feeling as something he will save for therapy. Though in its way, it seems to complicate more than edify.

 

"God, I wish I had therapy today," he thinks while watching the news.

 

"so does half the country." thinks the author looking at the text.

 

But no, the slow march. The descent into a depression reserved for funerals of loved ones. This is watching the assassination of the American dream. The one that Dr. Gonzo saw out in the las vegas desert. That generation bred like swine and instilled the worst ignorance in the hearts and minds of the new world order.

 

Thomas is thinking about that cop who told the black guy you would be dead twenty years ago, all because he refused to show his id (more research is needed for this claim). Thomas is watching the televised rape of liberty when a joke pops into his head.

 

"it's a tragedy some of these assholes are not selling loose cigarettes, or there would be hell to pay."

 

The joke makes him feel sick. He doesn't want to laugh. He can't. It hurts too much. The potential for peace in his lifetime was snuffed out in broad daylight; he feels like a red tracing laser is pointed at him that his life is in the crosshairs. And now it's all over. He was left with nothing but the laughter of fools and the tears of the clown.


3


 

There comes a day when what is false seems natural, yet ash will rain from the sky. A marked life (the Dusk child) shall mark an age of warlords. The rise of what is forgotten for heaven's decisions will give the universe new rules for hell: the Dusk child and their lantern soul.

 

The halls without end the world without order this is again, the reversed territory.

 

And so Abra is listening, with the four ears, the cliche fairy-like ones on the side of her head. And the fox-like pair on the top of her head.

 

She is an Alfar.

 

The haunted organic mass of flesh she is wandering through is a new life for spacetime. Where no matter what it is, it is waiting but with more abundance. She is positive for a missionary. She was going out to express the loving good news. Though anxious from what she heard.

 

The Nephilim is the emanation of the demiurge. Cancer in God's mind, the negative that is given a name (satan), is nothing but a role that he and others must play.

 

She would call out Oldboy and Sin. But they take too much for granted. She instead looks at the menu out of the corner of her eyes and selects maggot arms. His green armor is surrounding her and swelling and protecting as gentle and skilled with its firmness as an understanding lover. In her head, she hears a song from her dream that the boy Thomas liked. Donovan's catch the wind. It plays in her head as she goes buzzing forward, blue flames from jetpacks lighting up behind her.

 

Her forearms are more like lances, protruding from her elbow at twice the length. As an observer, I want to compare her to a praying mantis. However, that does not do the efficiency of what is happening justice. She had heard the Nephilim and now catapulted herself forward. The two spears in the star-shaped alien helmet she was reflecting from those cold black eyes. All of this in several seconds.

 

The Nephilim was eight or nine floors tall. It didn't even see what killed it—impaled and screaming out while she is burning through it. She has killed yet one more of the angel's children—the giants of renown; the thought pops in her head. The black blood covers her and pours out of the giant like a hydrant hit by a car.

 

When life leaves it, and it lays down in its rest. She will carve a penis-shaped scar on its face. And write around it, "this train is bound for glory." Not even comprehending the compulsion in the slightest, she decides not to pray for a week with fear that God will similarly correct her. However, she does start a fast, an act she also feels is necessary even if she does not understand the meaning. As if any communication can have importance. She is losing faith, not in his existence, but in the fear that he was invented on a pale blue dot a thousand big bangs ago.

 

Eternity is nothing but a prolonged-expression of the object that is the moment. Felt by many through those fragments of their lives, it feels fleeting. But when seen from afar, the whole of the thing. All of the spacetime as an on object shapes the mind with its clarity. Like each sentence makes a paragraph, and those combine into chapters. At least we see the shape of what came before, even if it is forgotten in the acknowledgment of its self.




 

4

 

Decisions, agency, it's the need for the illusion of choice. Thomas Biggerstaff lived on a pale blue planet in a universe full of galaxies and stars. His dreams were full of choice. He was obsessed with sorcery! a quartet of books by Steve Jackson of the pre-mass market games workshop fame.

 

Thomas was working on his book, Greed Hunter. Following his primary inspiration, the works of Yoshihiro Togashi, he decided never to finish it definitively (this is an obscure joke. But I think it is worth leaving here.) Deciding instead to make a choose your own adventure book in the style of a Fighting Fantasy.

 

Literary asperation put on the back burner. Instead, Thomas wanted to amuse himself. Do things he couldn't get away if you attached the fear of a legacy to it.

 

He had a philosophy to express, what you carry will slow you down. He felt a need to tell the world this. He thought the world in all its vagaries had its lessons to teach. It's things to say to him, and he listened. Thomas could carry on a conversation with God (or so he thought) with the passing traffic. He could lay in his room, and here a car hit the lane barrier with their tire and take it as a yes or know. Aware that the choice was his to make. But that the question he answered was a backward kind of divinity. What he truly felt as he was staring down a hall and could see himself at the end of it, these noises were a way to keep moving forward. a step towards the goal of self-actualization.

 

"Choice refines the algorithm we call self," he thought. Then went back to pretending he was creating; no, this was not the actualization of an object of art.

 

He was creating an external reality, something to tell his therapist. He wanted to impress him, to show that he had value—some confidence. Logical reasons, rationalizations of why his therapist should love him. It wasn't sexual that ship had sailed with Sara. He told her in no uncertain terms that he loved her yet; here he was, needing a therapist to get over her. "this is our last appointment." she said.

 

He cried through the whole session he usually did; it doesn't matter if we are talking about the appointments with his former therapist or his current. The dog and pony show of dragging catharsis kicking a screaming out into a world that wanted to deny it was the best he could do.

 

"try writing it down," said his therapist.

 

"I can only express a desire for choice because that is all I want." Said Thomas Biggerstick. "sooner or later, everything I write as an expression of a sense of self I understand to be a failure even if it is unavoidable. There is no grand expression that will provide me with a choice. All I desire is a choice, but once I express that, a door closes again."

 

"have you ever heard lawyers guns and money by warren Zevon?" said the therapist. That could be Sara, but probably it is not.

 

"no... why?" said Thomas Biggerstick.

 

"well, the chorus to that song is, send lawyers guns and money. Reminds of what you are trying to express." said the therapist that is increasingly becoming apparent that he is not Sara. "I am sorry to say we are out of time; I know I have you in my schedule next week. Would you like to go ahead and schedule one for the one after that as well?"

 

Thomas wanted to assault this man, to beat him to within an inch of his life. But instead looked at him with a smile and said, "no, it's okay. I will see you next week."

 

Like most hipster indie kids, Thomas liked wilco, and listened to the song heavy metal drummer on the walk home.

5

Timmy Biggerstick, or as his son Thomas called him Big Timmy Biggerstick. He was self-conscious? to the point that he wore a codpiece beneath his pants and walked significant strides. He was strutting big strides. He referred to his son as the "disappointment," sometimes Timmy would laugh, stopping to do a Bulgarian split squat in front of him with codpiece prominently thrust forward. As if in the challenge for the day when 16 years Thomas would do that which was necessary for his growth as a person if only because it got him assigned a therapist.

 

Taking two significant leaping steps forward, Thomas transitioned into a punt kick and left a dent in his father's codpiece. Who with a silent reserve collapsed on his side, holding what was left of his pride, and though damaged, he felt a need to assert his dominance. So he tried to scream out your still a disappointment. But instead, what came out was a high-pitched whistle, both wounded and desperate saying only "disappointment." He lay there holding himself. His son was stepping over him and going to the living room.

 

The next day when he was able to walk though slowly, painfully. His balls were swollen to the size of his bulge when he was wearing the codpiece. He would call the police, who would have his son evaluated before ultimately deciding that it was in his best interest and society that he talk once a week to professionals able to deal with the kind of violent expression that came naturally to him.

 

"So," said Sara, "why did you do it?"

 

Thomas "do what?"

 

"he can't have children any more children if he wanted to; you could show a little remorse?"

 

Thomas then told her that his father called him a disappointment and did Bulgarian split squats while saying derogatory things at him since he was a child.

 

"I can't even listen to only the lonely by Roy Orbison without thinking of some of the crap he has done... I walked into the kitchen on my ninth birthday, waiting for the cake he had gotten. When he came out of the kitchen, Roy's song was blazing through my bones as my father walked forward with a cake that had my picture on it with the words disappointment embroidered over my head on the cake. When I started to cry, he said, there is nothing you can do about it, loser." Thomas was shaken as he was forced to recall this story for his therapist.

 

Ultimately he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And now, just a month after Sara had left. He found himself swallowing all of his meds again. he talked with her once a week for three years.

 

He had tried it before, but his father said he was a crying wolf when he found out. It would have ruined your internal organs if you did it seriously, he told him.

 

Thomas lay in the bathtub feeling the fog descend over his consciousness. The last thing he did before passing out felt the warm water submerge his face.

 

Abra woke up not long after this. Unsure of many things yet still grateful that her god forgives. Though that was the last time she dreamed of Thomas.

 




6

 

The Flock of lambs is human in every way but each with the head of a sheep. There laid out in the grass fucking or grazing, and any combination of the two. They watched the giant, a Nephilim. Tend to his Flock. Picking up one stray female and licking her ass, listening to shrieks before eating her biting off a leg, and then the other with silence hitting her corpse when his teeth swallowed her belly. He threw her terror-stricken lamb head out across the valley, looking up the artificial lights hanging miles up along the dome.

 

"it is not a bad life," the Nephilim said to no one in particular.

 

The lover of the dead female cried out in desperation, "God is good." And looked for judgment as he ran (tears in his eyes) towards halls—both forbidden and dangerous.

 

"We were self-domesticating ourselves until we lost the rights of men—pets of things that were greater than ourselves. They continued to prosper as we shrank away. Nothing for us to worry about but fucking and eating...we were content. Happy even. This is the point where we became better sheep than men. Where we self-deluded believed that it was better for all, that our humanity is forgotten.

 

"reminds me of my time as a prisoner of war. I am locked away without food: the starving ache and the fantasy of indulgence of devouring anything. This defined those months painfully slow the moment, was exhaustive in its ability to exist out of time, by being of time at that moment. I know this sounds self consciously obscure, but there was room in my mind for anything other than my cell and my next meal, either real or imagined. "

 

Abra found him lying in the hall and took away his mask, revealing the wounded man staring back at her. Desperate for food, he tried to say something, all that came out was a wounded yelp. Tears in his eyes, not thinking the words but confident he had met an angel.

 

She pulled a chord out of her index finger and plugged it into the wall. A panel opened and out came a chord, and without much effort, she forced it down the man's throat and petted his head as if he were some scared animal.

 

He barely resisted, grateful to be complete, then felt something change in him. Hands became paws; hope became conviction. Hair growing covering him though possibly revealing his nature. Teeth are sharpening, canines earning their name. And at last, he is a dog on all fours. Abra pets him and says, "Now you can hear the morning star sing."

 

She let the beast follow her, and it was too wounded psychologically to have its mind salvaged.

 

Sin and Oldboy came forth without her command. Their Violence was the Violence of angels and devils—unprovoked, judging, and necessary.

 

"How evil! We are true! Make the lamb a man, and feed him to the dogs! His soul is lost. Oh! The genuinely evil one is you, your ability to provide rapture in a loss, even I am impressed at how you do evil and make it seem reasonable." Said Oldboy.

 

While Sin floated back, trying to evaluate whether there was ill intent or if his ignorance was all there was to the father's plan.

 

"what about you?" she said, looking at sin "what is your persuasion, what judgment do you bring me?"

 

Sin thought about the Cormac McCarthy novel he had been reading, saying at last "the frailty of everything, revealed at last."

 

Abra would suffer and hopeless mistrust. But well earned the light was she, and she would illuminate not just those pains but the joy they define.

But rejected, she stares at her angel and, in retort, says only, "Every story can make you sad."


7


"This is our starless horizon." Said Abra, like some white-tailed doe. Innocent in her judgment wishing only to live, if not to be alive.

 

Sin floated, his wings carry him in lopsided flashes like he may not stay in the air. His head is resting on the Lazer rifle his neck was attached to. His lizard-like tail is drifting like a snake in the air, trailing like some serpent treading water behind it. The horns above his ancient eyes. While like some fragile glass, he looks out on the world.

 

Oldboy, with leather-like skin of batwings, protrudes from the side of his skull, keeping him aloft. The cannon comes from where his lower jaw should be. Red eyes like neon, no lasers shine like crazy diamonds. His robes were ancient and weathered. He and his angel companion are about the size of a nine-month-old baby, each a siamese. Yin and yang the war of balance the song of stillness and equilibrium.

 

In addition to that, the speakers chirping electric noize of voices to speak through, wired artificial voices. Like Stephen Hawking voicebox coming back as a ghost to haunt the black holes he often dreamed of. These voices of angel and devil were now often silent. Instead, they listened like the dog she had spoken too, as they hunted the Nephilim.

 

She followed him as if they alone had some understanding. Abra and the now soulless dog she walked her path with.

 

"look around, and there the black flesh of god, the midnight of tunnels that lead out to the ancient—his pink fluid of blood. These are starless times; there is no destination on our horizon. We have gone as far as we can and now go only forward to make and leave our mark for those foolish enough to follow where we go. So that they may see before they die that all was futile. Even in the abyss at the end of the world, there is only following the road, not discovering, learning the language of suffering from nothing new to name. So what is expressed is so specific to create the illusion that it may well be of something new when in actuality, it was there from the start and laid out before from our first breath onward." Abra said all of this in that same white-tailed doe-like way.

 

As if she waited for the hunter to find her and strick her down, at last, giving her peace.

 

And for all the hope this gave her, she walks towards the light seeing the clearing, But still does not transform—the overhead of the purple grass with the red-tinted light reflects in the white of her eyes. She considers the Nephilim, yet a gutting strut walks out into the clearing instead of flying at it in violence.

 

"You are not welcome contemptuous little thing begone." said the Nephilim.

 

His shark-like face and hyena-like neck (elongated with a blood-stained mane) swerved deep-ocean white of his naked gorilla-like body to an irregular rhythm.

 

Abra stood before him only as big as one of his hands and easily held by either of the two he had.

 

"I will say only this; kill me now," she said.

 

Oldboy and Sin flew forward, Sin trying to pull her away while Oldboy laid down suppressing fire.

 

Sin said, "oh mistress, not again, we are of a higher sort. You are mistaken to think this will do anything but hurt. Please, I beg you, retreat or kill."

 

The Nephilim screams and then roars, Sin unable to summon to his mistress the will to fight, shoots his laser. He is burning through the Nephilim's brain. Slowly it gives up the ghost and falls forward dead.

 

Abra looks at the humans in their sheep masks and clicks through the targets on her menu with her eyes... She will make Sin and Oldboy go out and slaughter them. The smell of burning flesh, the masks falling off in their last moments.

 

She says, watching the carnage, "maybe some of you will even be reincarnated as me."

8

"pray not for death, for struggle does continue." Abra was squatting, looking at the lamb masked innocent.

 

"Why are you doing this," said the woman behind the latex mask.

 

"you speak?" said Abra.

 

"We all did, even the ones you killed." Said the woman behind the latex mask.

 

Abra reached out and pulled the lamb-like visage off the women's head. Her face was dirty with stains of sweat and cum; she looked to be thirty, chubby, and unaware from habit or training.

 

Pulling the knife from her boot, she stabbed and cut at the mask in her hand—long rips streaks of humanity for the lamb's muzzle. Then throwing it down between the women's legs.

 

Abra said, "put it on."

 

The woman put it on though was struggling to find with the cuts what was front or back. Abra is helping her after a moment, straighten it where the lamb looks forward but beneath is always terror of humanity.

 

Abra is feeling the woman, though she finds the lamb is hesitant to respond. Getting closer...are they going to kiss? No, this routine is familiar to Sin, which turns away crying.

 

"People like you are why I exist, not tainted purity. But the imperfection of joy. " Said Abra, "indulge the perversions of the flesh and die with them. Your tears can not stop my purity."

 

Sin cried with each scream and wet cutting sound (like steak being caught in a slamming door.) Why did the humans bring this out of her?

 

Oldboy flew over to sin singing a song without much of a toon,

"my dad wears dresses. To satan, he confesses all his twisted Sins.

My dad is a monster. He raped me with a lobster, all to fuck with Sin.

SIN, SIN, SInnnn. From daylight today's end, Sin will lose when the truth wins."

 

Sin, the little angel, was crying.



Part 2: psychics are forever, but chaos is the creator's best friend.

 
9
 

The child is born but lifeless. He has no soul yet cries out—all the working professionals and those who know to understand—terrified at his movement—terrified at the perverse life in its refusal! It's a choice to be bizarre.

 

His mother cried out, afraid, saying out to all who would listen, "take it away, destroy it!"

 

But a voice quieted them with its self-assurance. With a bark and a growl, "Somebody shut that bitch up!"

 

He was like some ancient Pimp with black horns, a raccoon fur coat (dyed a neon purple), and a long-rimmed fedora tilted to one side.

 

"Like give the kid, and I will kill y'all quick." The man said, pulling out a blunderbuss hidden in his fur coat—holding it forward like some phallus.

 

The doctor, still covered in a mess from the birth, turned towards the man before half his body disappeared in a blast that sprayed parts of him (or more accurately exploded parts of him) onto the faces of those in the room.

 

The man Screamed in calm musical bark, kind of in control, but so quickly did he lose it. "I am blind, joe death; damn your eyes!" now with a Tommy gun (also pulled from that fur coat {what the hell else is in there?}) He jumping some primitive dance to the rhythm of rat ta tat of holding down the trigger just a little longer than is required for leaving those bouncing, pulsing corpses dead.

 

Then, after all, were massacred, he lit a cigar pacing the carnage. Proclaiming to the corpses, "well damn, I hit the baby." while he is marching to music between a delta blues and the kind of headbanger shit al Jorgenson loves to phone in. The ghosts of those he killed are playing instruments covered in flames. Their eyes are empty and black. Demons holding the strings playing their spirits like twisted puppeteers of suffering marionettes. But the song goes on. Now leading the band in some reconciliation, he plays a solo on a kazoo (also pulled from his fur coat.). All the while, he was stomping and grooving in his unsexy way.

 

"To hell with this," he screams. The ghosts of fire disappear, but the demon puppeteers are gloating and laughing.

 

"I said, To hell with it." then, catching his grift, they to fade to wherever it is they belong.

 

He picks up the bullet-laden baby that smiles at him.

 

"yeah, uncle blind joe death is here." He says as security busts in the room, marking him in their crosshairs.

 

"Freeze you sick son a bitch!" says one, but before the other can start.

 

Blind Joe Death hollers out, "damn your eyes!" covering himself in his fur coat like batman, "turning on" his heat-resistant cape and collapsing with the baby's in a spiral of purple.

 

"I can't tell if I am dreaming or if the world is just fucked up." Says one of the bloated security guards. His asshole flexes a notch or two up on the terror scale when he hears an echoing Godzilla roar from outside the window.

 

"what do you think!" is that? Why it sounds like a kaiju-sized version of that sardonic sadist Blind Joe Death.

 

The slow, hesitant, or sincerely not brave security guard raises the hospital blinds seeing the horned man dancing with red-skinned demonic topless dancers. Then like some elevator giving out a collapsing down to the basement. The hospital is swallowed into the earth.

 

Months later, they would lower a camera down the square hole to see what had caused the collapse. It never came back up, but they sent a special microphone down in a heat-resistant box years later and when they tuned into it. They heard the suffering of the damned, their cries and screams.

 

Or at least that is what the children on the playground will tell you about the hospital that hell embraced.

 

 

10



 

His name is Apollyon, for he is the archangel of the abyss. His eyes were black and white, no color at all. The words "lust for life" were tattooed on his forehead, barely visible below his hairline—greasy hair framing those doll eyes.

 

Lord, it gets old, one thought then another, then the feeling of whether that is right or wrong? Do I have an existential crisis? Yes? You tell me you're in charge. They will think that we're crazy again if I keep referring to myself in the plural. At least they can't read my thoughts. Terror is the one thought unjudged if the soul could be heard by many. Don't make eye contact.

 

He looks anyway, and she smiles. She is a platinum blonde. She may have shaved her head a week earlier.

 

Skinny little thing, how old is she, I wonder? No way she left her twenties yet. If I wasn't the scarred monster, I am. I may have asked her out, but that is a lifetime ago. None of that for me; I am better off alone. There is no need to think about it. Just stop! Shit, she is walking over; give her a smile that will scare her away. Show these rotten teeth; half of them pulled nicotine-stained are the rest. She can do better, and she should know it. And if she doesn't, then I will let her know.

 

She walks over to him, blues eyes like artificial jewels.

 

"what are you having?" she says.

 

He smiles, and her eyes say the whole story, let me paraphrase for you. "Denise, you sure can pick them, some backwoods redneck who is scared of a toothbrush."

 

Sticking to his plan, he asks for a smoke, she complies, but under her breath, he can hear her whisper, "what a loser." as she turned around, heading back to her table.

 

Quickly downing his coffee. he walks out of the diner, smoke in hand.

 

"can I use your lighter?" he says to a man standing not far from the entrance.

 

"Sure." he hands it over to Apollyon, who says, "I will hand it right back."

 

"I know you will." says the man.

 

Is it wrong to feel some dread in the pseudo tragic? In the nearly psychic-like ability to see a failure, brace for it and still be left recoiling after the hit. No, don't be dramatic, don't think evil thoughts; you're a grown-ass man. No, you're not going to gouge your eyes out; yes, I know you only have to do it once. But for a decade, you have felt that need and have never caved to that compulsion. God, I forgot how much I hated cigarettes. Inhale exhale (passive-aggressive suicide.) Your my, you're my favorite waste of time. That is Marshall Crenshaw, right? Buddy holly in la bomba. Good music; if it weren't for you, I would be gone, not passive-aggressive suicide but the authentic articulation of existential dread.

 

He throws what's left of the smoke onto the pavement. Hearing part of it sizzle out on the damps mist-covered pavement—the smell of smoke in his lungs almost light-headed from the nicotine. He whistles the tune your my favorite waste of time.


11





Out in these hills, you can hear the god of the holler. You can hear doors closing and fate directed—the slow death in every breath. There ain't no getting out of this holler alive. Lungs are consumed, burning with lighter fuel and nicotine.

 

"if I were decent, I would die," he thought. Then compulsively, he repeats it again and again. As if in each repetition, some nuance is revealed. But there is no revelation for this old boy, only pain.

 

They were standing at the register. Rachel is chewing gum and pregnant. While Apollyon appreciates the bitch for being a godless slut.

 

"Isolated in the night, these hills consume me." He said he was looking out of the store's wall of glass.

 

"Are you a virgin?" Said Rachel.

 

"Yes." Said Apollyon.

 

"Are you gay?" she said.

 

"No."

 

The silence was there but not awkward. It was the comfortable silence of two jackasses far too stupid to feel shame or regrets. They were made for this world. Maybe just stupid enough to appreciate the pale blue dot. A bubble was growing pink and large out of Rachels's mouth. The chewing gum hides most of her face and expands like a balloon on a clown's helium tank at the circus. Then suddenly, with a pop, it is deflated and sucked back in for chewing.

 

"I'll suck your cock for five dollars." Said Rachel.

 

"You serious?"

 

"You can put it anywhere else for ten?"

 

She was wiping his mess out of her. Four handfuls of toilet paper later. She left the bathroom. Her confident pregnant duck stomp of a walk stopped. He was crying.

 

"It wasn't particularly long, but you didn't do anything terrible." Her voice was soothing, confident, and reassuring.

 

"My eyes are watering."

 

"Oh, that is a relief. I thought you might be crazy," She said, then laughed one hand, trying to hide it.

 

His lower lip quivered. And he looked out of the windows again. In the isolation of the night, they embraced. She licked the side of his face and said, "you owe me ten dollars."

 

But not letting go, they watched each other, whether in relief or amazement that the other existed. Feeling a kind of joy that made things alright for once.



12



 

"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.