Winter’s weight and dust galore Eyes heavy in the pain of dawn cheekbones ache whiskey madness takes its toll on an ever-building mint bridge to heaven, scars, delusions I’d be cutting the lawn if there were a lawn to cut I’d be drinking soda drops and pops if I wasn’t a ghost such a ghost walking through walls wading in the stalls I might be painting the fence if there were a fence to paint, the barricade is metal, so rusted stained with the sweats of dashing immigrants this mind so invaded where are you lumber lady now? on the seven seas forgetting fornicating the sailor boys as I drown in cold crab legs you flag hags put your pink slippers away and start another war be careful you kings of New Hampshire, you Queens of Albuquerque do be careful.
An anguished chill hurts the night king the moans of traffic dissect the interstate lonely bellows of travelers of midnight passage and me, well me I don’t really even know where I am, who I am, why I am some windy, flattened palace of stone and glass and flickering neon and I a statue filled with blood and pain rolling through my nightmares in dirty sheets waking to another day of heat and wind I crawled away, from one hole to the next this one deeper and meaner my crazed mind begging for bandages as I shake and crash my car in the parking lot of a miniature KFC this fast-food world these strips of seductive shopping we work, work, work to buy, buy, buy the oppressed chained to numbing desks chained to numbing machines and boredom the boredom of it all bored out of my skull and being human is slowly, no quickly losing its meaning in this Dropolis and I shudder at the thought of bringing breath to dawn a heart attack, no stroke on the precipice of another day of hopeless struggle and I wonder what is a smile? what is laughter?
The dining of the great meal took place casually in chairs and on a soft sofa in the living room at the home of Veronica Eyes in Berlin, Wyoming. Plates and beverages rested on a coffee table; some people stood while they ate and drank. There was the murmur of blended conversations. There was light laughing.
Steel Brandenburg III sat in a chair in a corner beneath a tall reading lamp with a red velvet shade. He was quiet. He was alone among the people. He watched the others eat, trying to decipher if they liked the store-bought gravy. He braced himself for bitter reactions. Everyone acted as if he wasn’t even there as he raised fork to mouth repetitively. He was a ghost, someone looking in from the other side. He had to break the barrier.
“Are you all enjoying the gravy!?” Steel suddenly blurted out. The others stopped talking for a moment and looked at him. One guy named Craig, who was a real jerk, said, “What’s with the gravy, man? Why are you always about the gravy?”
Steel cleared his throat and looked around at everyone as they awaited his answer. “I… I just want everyone to get the most out of their meal. Gravy’s wonderful for that. It adds flavor and richness to our food.”
Craig the jerk busted out laughing. The others followed suit, even Veronica Eyes.
“Whaaat!?” Craig said with a disbelieving laugh. “That’s like the gayest thing I ever heard anyone say.”
He moved closer to Steel and looked down at him. Craig Nusmerg was a tall buffoon with an odd-shaped body, something resembling a bosc pear. People say the heavy drinking has caused his body to morph and turn him into the strange being he now was.
Craig Nusmerg had been a high school basketball star and nothing much more since. He worked the presses of the local newspaper for the last ten years and always smelled of ink and grease. He was divorced and lived alone in a rectangular can at the local trailer park. Now he was towering over Steel like an over-ripened Godzilla.
Steel looked up at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry. That’s how I feel.”
“Why are you here anyways?” Craig wanted to know. “Nobody gives two shits about the stupid gravy.”
Steel glared at him. “That’s not true. I’m sure plenty of people here are enjoying the gravy.”
Craig scoffed and shook his head. His eyes then caught the white gravy boat sitting on the coffee table and he went to pick it up. “You like gravy so much,” Craig said to Steel as he carried it toward him, “Here you go. Have some gravy.” He tipped the gravy boat, and a thick stream of warm brown gravy came pouring out right on top of Steel’s head. Craig kept pouring and pouring, snickering with delight, until the entire gravy boat was empty. Steel just sat there and let him do it. He let him do it all the way. He just stayed in the chair as the gravy dripped from his hair, down his face, and into his lap.
“God damn it, Craig!” Veronica cried out. “You got gravy all over my favorite chair!”
Craig just laughed, went to grab more beer from the refrigerator, and slipped out onto the back patio.
Veronica ran to get some towels. When she got back, she started mopping up as much of the gravy as she could. She handed a towel to Steel. “You better wipe your face off,” she said. “You look like some horrible creature.”
“Do you think I could use your shower,” Steel asked her with gravy spattering out of his mouth as he spoke.
Veronica was aghast by such a request. “My shower? Oh, no. No, no, no. Let’s just get you out into the yard and hose you off.”
Veronica led Steel out the front of the house and had him stand in the small yard of grass. She went to the water spigot and cranked it on as she leveled the hose. She aimed the nozzle at Steel and began to spray him off. “Close your eyes and your mouth, Steel,” she told him as she worked. “I don’t want to rupture your pupils or break your teeth.” But then again, maybe she did.
It wasn’t long before the real Steel emerged from beneath the slick of gravy. She had him turn around and hold his arms out to his sides. “That’s good,” she said. “I need to get you nice and clean before we send you home.”
“Home?” Steel asked without turning to look at her. “You want me to go home? Why don’t you send that fuck-off Craig Nusmerg home? He’s the jerk. He’s the one who started this whole thing.”
Veronica sighed as she sprayed. “You weren’t even supposed to be here.”
“Right. You lied to me. Why did you lie to me?”
“Because I just knew something weird like this would happen. Weird things always happen when you’re around, Steel. You’re a weird magnet. You’re… You’re just completely weird. I didn’t want you ruining my party.”
Steel turned and stepped back from the spray of water. “Sure. Sure. I get it. Sorry to trouble you.” He walked off, soaking wet, and moved down the street toward where his pickup was parked. He got in it and sped off.
The moon was full and bright, and the landscape illuminated. Steel Brandenburg III drove his white pickup like a cowboy even though he was nothing like a cowboy. He went out to a place called Silver Lake and parked within the bones of the trees near the shore. That same moon that had chased him from the city was still there in the sky, looking down, watching him.
He got out of the truck and went closer to the water. It looked like a mirror with the way the light was shining down on it. He craned his neck upward to look at the ivory disk in the sky and then he just started to scream like an animal. He screamed and screamed until his throat hurt. A herd of deer shuddered through the surrounding brush. He fell to his knees and bowed his head in irreverent prayer, mocking a God who never saw him or cared for him.
He got back up and stumbled to the truck to retrieve his phone. He pressed the button for Veronica Eyes. He breathed as he waited.
“Hello? What is it, Steel? Why are you calling?”
“I just wanted to know if you have ever heard of a symbolic revenge tale?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You should be aware that the silly little actions of you and your friends could have serious consequences.”
“What? Have you been drinking? Where are you?”
“Stop asking me questions, Veronica. Just stop. But be prepared.” He ended the call. He looked around at the wilds. The treetops suddenly bent in a gust of wind. Something snapped and fell nearby.
TO BE CONTINUED
By
Aaron Echoes August
Visit cerealaftersex.com for the previous part of this story… And many more strange tales.
When you want to be someone but no one knows who you really are when you’re living in the worm that lives in your own belly drinking dirt and eating poison wine crying to live laughing to die and everything inside vanishes and you feel like you’re living in a Neverland with a never hat and a never coat and you’ve spent every dime you ever had wasting time strolling on the sun with a hip pocket full of memories sprinkling them on the lava like seed counting all your bad deeds all the dirty visions you’ve seen all the air you’ve breathed that was never meant for you or me and you want God to do some CPR but you haven’t been filling his golden plate He looks down on you with pity and shame rips the angel from your veins deserting you in a Neverland wasting away like a dead urchin on the road as jets fly by overhead pissing fuel and exhaust to clog it all up crawl into the can man drink your way to the cave and follow that light to the other end to that great big grin and a candy-apple red Neverland.
In the Wyoming wilds of tumbling grief, out beyond the city of no fame or purpose, just broken lives in boxes and a withering menagerie of amenities, the man in the white truck parked on a lonely hill would drink golden juice and look out upon the vast emptiness of his kingdom.
He would sit there nearly all day, the windows down, the western wind rolling in, the radio weeping some sad song about love and life and all the loss ever involved. He would sigh. He would drive back to town a wounded man.
He lived in an overly expensive apartment that was really a dump. The world takes advantage when it can. He got home in the late afternoon to take a shower. He needed to make gravy for a dinner party with the clowns. Brown gravy. Smooth gravy. Gravy like a silently still and unmuddied lake in a faraway place in the galactic Italian Dolomites.
The party was to be held at the home of the mysterious Veronica Eyes. She had eyes that didn’t look human. They were orange, almost. He wondered what she thought of him. He was not much for speaking clearly, but he was planning to discuss noise at the library with everyone and how much he hated it and was going to lodge a formal complaint with the library board of trustees. He’d try to throw in a joke or two if he could.
Fascinating enough? he wondered. He hoped the gravy would be a big hit as well. His nervous condition negated most friendships. He was known as Steel because he was cold and heartless… And the fact that his name was in fact Steel. Steel Brandenburg III. He was from Utica, NY and somehow ended up in the barren den of loneliness in Wyoming. Berlin, Wyoming is what the nowhere and isolated town was called. The population was 8,888 people and most of them hated life or people or both. The town sat in a narrow valley. High sandy rock cliffs the color of spice cake bordered the northern edge. An interstate bordered the southern side. Further south were the wildlands and the hills and the cold waters, places where he would play and meditate and recharge his cellophane heart.
Steel stirred the bubbling gravy in the pot to keep it smooth. He bent his head down to take a smell of it and his glasses slipped off and fell into the pot.
“Holy hell mother of piss!” he yelled out loud, loud enough to shake the windows and walls and some of the limbs in a tree that grew tall and crooked outside his second-story apartment. He took the pot by the handle and tossed it. It hit a wall, splattered, made a mess, his head confessed the short fuse of his dynamite soul.
He paused to catch his breath, regain some sense of exposure. He almost cried, then he laughed. His cell phone rang, and he trembled as he answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi Steel, it’s Veronica.”
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you were still planning on bringing that yummy brown gravy to the dinner party.”
“Uh, well…”
“I’m making mashed potatoes and thought how wonderful it would be for people to have gravy with them. It would be ever so delicious.”
Steel looked across the apartment to where the upturned pot rested in the carpet beneath a Picasso wall of gravy in liquid motion. “Oh. I’m afraid I’ve had a bit of an accident in my kitchen. I’ve lost the gravy. I mean, I didn’t lose it… It’s just not going to happen. I’m sorry.”
Veronica’s pause indicated disappointment. “Oh. That’s too bad. I was really looking forward to it.”
“I’m sure you were… If you’d like, I could pick up a jar or two of gravy at the store on my way over?”
“Gravy from a jar?”
“Sure. It’s not as good as my scratch work, but it will do in a pinch.”
She didn’t answer him at first because she was whispering to someone in the background, something about gravy, he thought. “You know what, Steel… I’m suddenly not feeling very well and I think I have to cancel the party.”
“Cancel the party?”
“Yes.”
“But I was really looking forward to it and seeing you and…”
Veronica faked a cough, groaned a little. “I’m sorry. Maybe another time.” She suddenly ended the call and was gone, lost in the vibrations of Berlin, Wyoming airwaves.
“Huh?” Steel thought out loud. “She’s lying. She must be lying. Of course, she’s lying.”
Steel bent down with a bucket and a sponge for the arduous task of cleaning gravy out of the carpet and from the wall. He washed the pot and put it back into a cabinet. He rinsed his glasses off and put them back on. They hadn’t been damaged, thank God. The world was clear again. People hated him. He knew it. Veronica had never wanted him at the party in the first place. Why didn’t she just say so, he thought. Why put him through the agony of more social disgrace and disappointment. But then he had an idea. He was going to go to the party after all. He was going to call her out on her lie, her Billy goat bluff.
He drove to the one and only grocery store in town. He plucked two jars of brown gravy from the shelf and then went to stand in the long, agonizingly slow checkout lane. “One cashier again,” Steel muttered out loud. Some people turned to look at him.
When it came his turn, he carefully set the two jars of gravy down on the black belt that moved the groceries forward so the cahier could scan them. It was dirty. It was wet with milk in some places. “Ugh. Don’t you guys ever clean this thing off?” Steel said as he glared at the cashier, an older woman with fuzzy orange hair and a very pale face. She was smacking gum.
“Just two jars of gravy?” she asked with a gravelly voice, a voice the victim of repetitive cigarette assault. She ignored his complaint.
“Yeah, two jars of gravy… But what about the belt? You didn’t give me a satisfactory reply. You don’t seem very concerned about it at all.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“I’m serious,” Steel plodded on. “I don’t want to set my groceries down on this gross thing,” he said. He turned to look at the people behind him in line. “I’m sure no one does.”
The cashier sighed. She hated her job. She hated dealing with jerks like Steel Brandenburg III. She wanted to stab him. She retrieved a spray bottle of blue cleaner from some hidden space below. She reached somewhere else for a couple of sheets of paper towels. “Can you pick the jars up please,” she said to Steel. He picked them up. She sprayed the belt down with the cleaner and wiped it up with the paper towels. “Better?”
“Yes,” Steel said with a smile as he put the jars of gravy back down on the belt. “Thank you. I’d suggest you do that after every customer.”
She gave him a dirty look. She ran the jars of gravy over the scanner and bagged them. “$5.18.”
Steel inserted his bank card into the pay pad and waited. He pressed some numbers. “You know, this thing could use some cleaning, too. Ugh. Makes my stomach turn thinking of all the nasty fingers touching this thing.” Once his card was approved he removed it and filed it back into its proper place in his brown wallet. He reached for his bag. “Thanks,” he said to her, and out the doors he went.
Veronica Eyes lived in a nothing fancy house in a nothing fancy neighborhood on the southwest side of Berlin, Wyoming. The houses were small, basic, boring mostly. They were yellow, baby blue, dirty white.
Steel stopped his white pickup at the end of the block and looked up the street. There was a pile of cars in front of her house. “I knew it,” he said out loud. “She’s a liar and a phony.”
He parked the truck out of view of the front windows and went to the door. He heard laughing and talking beyond it. He rang the doorbell and waited. Someone was coming to answer. Veronica had a look of shock on her face when she saw him there. “Steel…” she nervously squeaked. “What are you doing?”
He grinned at her. She looked at the grocery bag he was holding. “I knew you were pulling my leg about being sick, so I came to the party after all. Nice trick. You almost got me.” He laughed oddly and peered over her shoulder. “Can I come in?”
Veronica reluctantly pulled the door wider. The other guests got quiet when they turned to look at him with surprised wonder.
Steel raised the grocery bag in the air. “Hi everyone! No need to fear. I brought gravy!”
CEREAL AFTER SEX 