In the warbled dawn of a coming hot summer day the crypto man wiles away in a labyrinth of enigma. The staircase to the pancake house was long and winding. He burst through and there were the smells of syrup and broiling butter. It was the essence of Isis, the corrugated dreams of a running kite, and he took a seat in a silver, translucent booth. He pawed the menu open, read a few lines, set it aside.
The waitress ghost floated over. She was blue and beautiful. He looked into the mirror of the street, a cacophony of visions, dreams and illusions. Lamp shades littered like tattered doves, the human motion beating against the breath of God.
He wanted to know if magic was on the menu. He wanted to know if she could pull a short stack out of a top hat. She laughed and bent, scribbled on her periwinkle pad.
“And a pot of coffee, a cradle of sweetener, and one of those little silver pitchers of cream.”
His voice was like raw diamonds, a gallant sweep of the clock across highway sands.
Someone slipped a couple of coins into the 4-dimensional jukebox and the song Free Falling by Tom Petty came spilling out. He suddenly recalled the stain of polluted mountains, elaborate shopping malls, the smell of man in the ocean.
“This one always gets me right in the guts,” he said to her. “Memories can be like knives.”
Her electric lips were stretched by a mile-wide smile. “You must be 110 years old,” she said. “That song is so old.”
“One-hundred and eleven,” he replied.
“You keep yourself plugged in nice and tight every night?”
“I dream of electric camels and wide expanses of desert… How about you? What unfolds in your dreams?”
Her eyes popped skyward as she thought about it. “Despite taking my sleepers, I dream of mountains made of pancakes and syrup is lava and a ball of butter is a golden Buddha.” She frowned. “I suppose it’s a hazard of working in this place.”
He looked around the place. It hummed of life, or at least a comforting pause within it. “I like it here. I enjoy the clinking of cups and plates and the blended din of voices.”
“Well,” she laughed. “That makes one of you. It’s easy for you to say. You can just get up and walk out of here and enjoy the rest of your day out in the beautiful world. I’m stuck like stink on a skunk.”
“Why don’t you just duck out. We can go to the library and read.”
“Library? Read? Is that your idea of fun?”
“Yes.”
Someone tapped a little silver bell. “Sheila! Order up.”
“I’d like to, but I can’t. Life calls.” She floated away, did her rounds of drudgery, and then returned with his coffee and magical short stack as he requested. She set the things down in a calm and orderly fashion. Her visage was of embers. She walked away eternal, and he sat alone and ate and drank, a forceful empty ache rising somehow. He tried to wish it away, but his wishes rarely came true.
Cherry blossoms blew up in his face, a memory bloom, rain, a long walkway left polished by the wetness from the sky. He looked up at the white obelisk, the markings from space. His face tilted toward the window and he suddenly longed to go homeward.
It was a blue-gray evening dipped in pink and orange when Simon Waterbones drove his car into a KFC restaurant in downtown Amarillo, Texas.
There was a mess of broken glass, toppled tables, spilled chicken and drinks.
He stepped out into a cloud of dust, coughed, brushed himself off. “Shit. Sorry about that.”
An old woman was on the tiled floor covered in gravy and mashed potatoes. She was twitching and moaning.
A man got on his phone and called the police. He pointed a stern finger at Simon. “You’ll get life in prison for this!” he shouted.
Simon got scared and ran. His feet popped and flopped upon the grimy walkways of a dim downtown.
When he couldn’t run anymore, he stopped to catch his breath.
He was in a lowly neighborhood of beat down houses from another time. He heard the wail of police sirens in the distance. He ran up some cement steps and onto the porch of a smeared green abode. He slammed his way through the front door and skidded into a dining room. There was a table with people sitting around it. A man slammed his fist down and dishes rattled. His bushy moustache moved when he spoke. “Just what in the hell is the meaning of this!?” He stood up and threatened Simon with a butter knife. “Get out of here!”
A young girl turned her head and looked at Simon. “Please don’t kill us,” she said.
Simon ran back out of the house. The man with the butter knife chased after him. “I’ll stick you if you come around here again!” He threw the knife like a circus performer and it barely missed Simon’s face, then clinked away on the walkway. Simon bolted toward the tall buildings rising from the guts of Amarillo. His plan was to go to the newspaper building where he worked.
He rode the elevator to the second floor and went into the newsroom. His cumbersome and inept boss, Christine Divine, scowled at him. “Your lunch break is an hour, not an hour and a half. Do you want us to miss deadline?”
Simon took a seat at his desk and illuminated his computer screen with a simple touch of the spacebar. “Sorry. I had car trouble and had to walk back.”
Christine scoffed. “I’m surprised another relative hasn’t died.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Yes. I am.”
“So what if I lied? If this place wasn’t so God damn awful, I wouldn’t mind coming to work. But it makes me sick every single day, but I can’t do anything about it because of money. Fucking money. I have to live this shitty life because of money. I have to crawl in here every single day miserable out of my mind because this society we live in doesn’t just allow people to be what they were truly meant to be. So, yes Christine, I lied about my uncle dying, I lied about my cousin dying because I simply can’t stand to be here!”
“Then maybe you should find somewhere else to work.”
“If only I could.”
Simon opened InDesign on his computer and went to work laying out some newspaper pages. He didn’t say another word to anyone for a long time. Most of his co-workers hated him. Simon often called out with ridiculous excuses, and it was his co-workers who often suffered for it. “Fuck them,” he thought as he thought about it.
He looked up from his work and saw one of the reporters talking to Christine. Simon overheard the following words: KFC. Car. Crash. Injuries. Damage. Suspect fled. Home invasion. Front page story.
“That’s me,” he whispered to himself. “I’m trapped. I’m dead.”
He looked up and big Christine Divine was standing over him. “We need to slot a new story for the front page. Some lunatic crashed his car into KFC and ran off. Make a spot for it. It’s on its way.”
Simon sharply saluted her as if he was in the military. “Yes, mam.”
She rolled her eyes at him and walked away.
Forty-seven minutes later he was putting the finishing touches on his own story. He printed the proofs and passed them out to the other copy editors. None of them were his friends so maybe they wouldn’t notice that the car in the photo was his. No. They couldn’t. It was covered in dust and debris. But then he realized the cops would soon track him down. All they had to do was run the plates, look in the glovebox. There it all was in black and white: Simon Waterbones, 2117 Virginia Ave., Apt. 4, Amarillo, TX. Knock, knock.
Simon went to the restroom and threw up. He had to escape but there was no escape. How and where to? He knew the only choice he had was to turn himself in. There was nothing else he could do. His life was fucked.
“I just wanted some god dam chicken and coleslaw,” he mumbled to himself inside the raspberry-colored stall of the men’s room. “I just wanted to have my dinner… And now my entire life is ruined because I suck at being a human being. I suck at being alive. I’m a walking disaster. This shit crawling around in my head is killing me.” He slammed a fist against the cold tiled wall. “Why was I even born?”
Once his shift was over, Simon walked to a bus stop and waited. He shakily smoked a cigarette. The bus approached, it stopped and drew a mechanical breath. The ride to his neighborhood was dim and lonely. The city outside the window was moving points of erratic lights, traffic elongated like stretched out metal taffy painted like a psychedelic circus, a moon up high looked down upon him and laughed. He wished the bus would just keep going, break the barrier of the city limits and just go. “Drop me in the middle of Kansas, for Christ’s sake,” he mumbled to himself. “I don’t care. I’ll hide in a hotel elevator. I’ll chew on ice. I’ll try to breathe.”
He sat still and listened to the engine of the bus. It stopped and went. He could hear the clicking sound of the turn signal. The driver spoke over the radio to someone. Simon thought he heard him say: “Yeah, I got him.”
On Western Avenue, Simon reached up and tugged on the wire that signaled the driver to let him off at the next stop. The bus crawled to the curb. Simon got up and walked toward the exit. “Are you sure you want to get off here?” the driver asked.
Simon struggled to smile. “I’m not sure of anything anymore,” he said, and he stepped off the bus and into a sea of run down neon and city dirt. He watched as the bus pulled away with a polluted hiss. The engine growled. The machine soon disappeared.
Simon turned and looked at the orange and white auto parts store. He looked up and down the entire avenue and it was nothing but beat down stores dressed in electric signage. It was one long eternal strip mall.
He saw a burger place and went in. He ate a lonely meal at a plastic table. He sipped on a cold soda. He looked out the window and in it was reflected a dead-end life. His own face was distorted. His hair looked stupid. His eyes ached. He considered snuffing it as a worthy alternative. Life just hurt too God damn much.
He pushed his tray of food away and rested his head down on his crossed arms. He closed his eyes and listened to the garbage music overhead. There was a tussle of some voices. Customers came and went. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. His nametag said: MANAGER. “Hey. You can’t sleep in here.”
Simon blinked his eyes and got up. He dumped his tray of trash and walked back out onto the strip of meaningless shit. He breathed the musty air and started walking toward home.
The next morning there was a knock at the door. Two cops had come to arrest him. Simon wept as they led him to the patrol car and stuffed him into the back seat. The ride was long and painful. He looked out at the swirling city, and it spat back at him. He was full of regrets; they were spilling over. “Am I going to do time for this?” he asked the cops up front.
“That’s up to the judge,” one of them answered. “But you nearly killed people, so I figure you’ll get something.” They laughed at him.
“I didn’t mean to,” Simon pleaded. “I was just so upset about life. I lost control. I’m always losing control.”
“Not our problem, buddy,” the other cop said. “Now, why don’t you just shut up.”
Simon Waterbones was found to be a menace to society just as society was a menace to him. He sat in a prison cell and scribbled in a notebook with a half-eaten pencil. No one ever came to visit. He had no friends among the other inmates. They all hated him without even knowing him. It’s because he was weak and as fragile as glass. It’s because he was different. The world didn’t fit him, and he didn’t fit the world. He had been born in the wrong place and time. He sighed and looked up at a concrete wall painted death gray. He set his notebook aside and laid down on his bunk. He closed his eyes and tried to dream of flying.
Mother Melba Gould carried a tray supporting a pot of hot java, clean cups, cream and sugar. She carefully set it down on the coffee table in the front room. Steel followed behind her holding a pie. Dutch apple. There was also a carton of vanilla ice cream, a scooper, glass bowls.
“Pastor Stikk,” Melba said. “Would you like to say another prayer before we enjoy our dessert?”
He stood among them and smiled. “Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. He mumbled something inaudible and sighed. “But I’ve been moved by the Holy Spirit to make a confession to you all.” He looked over at Carrie. “Some serious love has been happening in this room. It happened while you two were in the kitchen. I’m sorry, Steel, Melba. This is all too powerful for me to hold in any longer. I love Carrie. I’ve loved Carrie for a very long time.” He glared at Steel. “Long before you set foot in Berlin, Wyoming, young man.”
Steel took his time pouring himself a cup of coffee. He worked in the cream and sugar, stirred it with a silver spoon. “So, you’re a thief?” he said. “You’re going to steal another man’s woman just like that? That’s real Christian of you.”
“I can’t steal something that already belongs to me,” Pastor Stikk snapped.
Carrie broke in. “Wait a minute… Don’t I have a say in this? I’m not some cow to barter over.”
Someone in the clouds snickered.
“I believe your moans of ecstasy earlier said enough, Carrie,” the pastor pointed out.
“Ecstasy!?” Melba cried out. “What kind of ecstasy has been going on in here? Do you not see the pictures of our beloved Jesus hanging on the walls? You did this in front of his eyes?”
Pastor Craig Stikk pumped the brakes at her with his hands. “Hold on, Melba. The Lord spoke to me. He told me that Carrie would be mine. Was it a few moments of heavy lust? Yes, it was. But it was lust blessed by God.”
“Lust?” Steel said.
The pastor laid foul eyes on him. “I ventured into Carrie’s private area, if you must know. With my face. It was wonderous.”
Steel shot up from his seat, nearly tossing his cup of coffee to the floor. “You’re nothing but a creepy pervert. How dare you molest my girlfriend! I ought to knock your block off and kick it down the street like a soccer ball.”
Mother Melba put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Enough! she said, shaking her face. “I’ve heard enough. This day has become twisted into something I never dreamed of. Such talk.” She turned to look up at Steel. “But then again… I have a confession as well.”
Steel’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t have to say anything, Ms. Gould.”
Carrie looked over at Steel. “What is she talking about? What’s going on?”
Steel took a deep breath. “As long as we are all spilling our sinful and lustful guts… I kissed your mother, Carrie. In the kitchen. Twice.”
“What!?”
Pasator Stikk chuckled. “This is great. Open, lustful communication. Please, tell us more, Steel… Because there is always more.”
Steel paused for a moment. Then he looked around at them all. “I touched her between the legs, too.”
“Mother!” Carrie cried out. “How could you allow it?”
“How could I? How could you!?” Melba snipped. “Poor, poor, Steel. You were cheating on him… And with a man of God no less!”
“And tally ho… He was cheating on me!”
Pastor Stikk put his hands in the air to settle the voices. “Please, friends. None of this is cheating. We are merely putting the puzzle pieces of love in the proper places. We fit better like this. This is God’s will. Now, watch.” He went over to Carrie and forced a kiss upon her mouth. “There. Let that linger for a moment. Okay, Steel. Now you give her a whack.”
“What?”
“Just do it. Kiss her.”
Steel went to Carrie and gave her a kiss as well. The pastor was envious because it was long and deep, and he began to worry if his little experiment would backfire. “That’s enough,” he said. “Well, Carrie. Whose kiss moved you more? Whose kiss made your loins shiver?”
Carrie stood and put her hands in the air, palms out. “This is all too weird. You are putting too much pressure on me. Love cannot be forced. I won’t allow it to be forced upon me like this. You both need your heads examined. I’m going to my room to be alone. Good day to you both.”
The men watched as Carrie disappeared up the stairs. They looked at each other. Pastor Snikk sneered. “Good job. You drove her away.”
“Me?” Steel said. “You’re the one being all weird with your twisted kissing game. Do you even realize how bizarre you are acting?”
“I’m merely acting upon the will of my Lord.”
“Bullshit. You’re acting upon the will of your old, crunchy balls.”
Mother Melba shot up from her place of meekness. “Out!” she yelled. “I’ve had enough of this god damn bickering!” She suddenly clamped both of her hands over her mouth. “Oh dear,” she said. “Do you see what you two have done to me!? I’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain.” She went to one of the portraits of Jesus on the wall and her sorrowful eyes fell upon the image. She petted his face with her fingertips and spoke softly. “I’m so sorry, Jesus. Please forgive me. I’ll eat a bar of soap if it is what you wish of me.”
Steel threw his hands up in the air. “I’m out of here. Thanks for one of the weirdest days of my life!”
Once he was out the front door and down the walk, Pastor Stikk went to Mother Melba who was still stuck to the wall and whimpering to her framed Savior. He cleared his throat to gain her attention. “Melba? Are you all right, dear?”
Her eyes slid slowly to gaze upon his face. “I think I may have a broken soul, pastor. For the first time in my life, I seriously fear Hell.”
“Come now, Melba. It was a simple slip of the tongue. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the pastor said.
She wet her lips and moaned oddly. “A slip of the tongue?”
“A mistake. No one’s perfect.”
“Would you mind helping me up to my bedroom? I think I need to lie down for a while.”
The pastor nodded and put an arm around her. He held her like that all the way upstairs and into her room. She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Close the door,” she said. She patted the soft place beside her. “Come sit with me.”
Pastor Stikk moved toward the bed and sat down beside her.
“I haven’t been with a man in a very, very long time,” she confessed.
“There’s no sin in that, Melba,” he said. “Purity is often a blessing.”
She slid a hand onto his thigh. “Perhaps, but would you be willing to remind me what it’s like?”
“Melba. I think your emotions are overwhelming you now. I don’t believe you are thinking straight… And besides, I love Carrie. She’s in the very next room. I could never…”
“I just need you to fill the gaping emptiness inside me. Just for a little while.” She stood and began to undress.
The pastor’s eyes danced upon the morbid vision of her unshapely body. He had a sickness in his head and so slowly reached out a hand to touch her. She slid back onto the bed, and he smoothly followed after.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 