CEREAL AFTER SEX

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The Lobster Guy (Ten)

Truman Humboldt glanced once in the rear-view mirror and the lobster ghost was gone. All he saw was the brown bowl where Lincoln, Nebraska sat in the distance like ripening fruit of varied shapes and shades, the orange and smoky image now growing ever smaller as the miles ticked off in the opposite direction.

Truman sighed deeply. He suddenly felt very free and uplifted. And although he was returning to the garbage town of Neptune and the awful job of breaking chicken necks at the processing plant, he looked beyond all that to a brighter future that he truly believed was within his grasp.

It was late afternoon when he finally returned the car to the rental office. He looked the vehicle over, smiled, and then patted the hood. “Thanks for the wonderful ride to Red Lobster,” he said. “I’ll never forget it.”

Truman slipped the keys and the official paperwork into the slot provided outside. He turned, put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. “Ah,” he exhaled. “My future knows no bounds. No bounds whatsoever.”

Truman felt so good that he decided to take a stroll through the sad downtown and get himself an ice cream at Sundaes in Neptune, one of the few local places with life and one that was actually worth something. He felt he deserved a treat… Finally.

Once he got to the shop with the big glass windows full of colorful scenes depicting an ice cream and candy wonderland, he pulled the door open and a bell tinkled with welcoming, signaling that he indeed must be alive. The place smelled of sugar and chocolate and happy memories and Truman went to the counter where a blonde teeny bopper wearing a paper white hat and a bright glossy smile greeted him. He was still wearing his lobster-red tuxedo complete with top hat and walking cane and she seemed impressed, or maybe just puzzled.

“Hi! Welcome to Sundaes in Neptune,” she bubbled. “What’s your pleasure today?”

Truman’s eyes danced over the large menu above and behind her and its wide variety of choices. “Hmm,” Truman thought out loud. “Do you have any lobster ice cream?”

The girl laughed. “Lobster ice cream? Eww. No, sir. I’m afraid we don’t have any lobster ice cream… I don’t think I’ve ever seen lobster ice cream. Is that real… Or are you just fooling with me?” She was very electric and talkative. “That’s a great outfit by the way. Did you just come from a wedding?”

“No,” Truman said as he still perused the menu. “I had lunch at Red Lobster.”

“Oh,” the girl said, casting an awkward glance in his direction and then turning to look up at the menu board along with him. “Do you like peppermint? The peppermint is my favorite.”

“I want ice cream, not toothpaste. I think I’ll go with the cherry chocolate delight in a sugar cone please,” Truman decided.

“Oh. Yummy yum yum,” the girl said, and she grabbed a silver scooper and dug into the bucket of cherry chocolate delight and plopped it atop a crispy sugar cone wrapped in gentle pink paper around the bottom half. “Just one scoop?”

“This is a special occasion. Make it two scoops,” Truman beamed.

“You got it,” the girl said, and she piled two meaty balls of ice cream on the cone and held it while he got his money out. He paid her and she handed him his special treat.
“Wow,” Truman said, smiling like a kid. “Awesome sauce… This looks great. Thanks.”

“Have a good rest of this beautiful day,” the girl said as Truman made his way toward the door. He turned and hoisted his cone as in a toast to the whole world. “It is a beautiful day!” he exclaimed with a broad smile, and he went back out into the grime and abandonment of the decaying downtown, but it did not soil his good mood. He focused on better days ahead as he walked, licking his ice cream slowly, relishing the present moment of peace and contentment.

It was becoming Sunday evening on the brim of the world, yet there was still light, as he made his way toward home. He stopped in front of the old movie house, The Neptune Theater, now dim and abandoned, irrelevant movie posters left behind, the glass of the ticket booth made opaque by time. He sucked the last of the ice cream from the bottom tip of the cone and looked into the building, past his own hazy reflection.

It had been left to rot, now a sea of soft dust floating about inside, ghosts of good times and laughter or maybe hot kissing in the back row floated through the lobby. Truman regretted never having someone to make out with at the movies. But then he thought, as he pushed the final piece of the cone into his mouth, so what… That was then, and this is now. He used his pointer finger to write something on the grimy glass: Be Here Now.

He stepped back and admired his proclamation for the world to relish in and hopefully live by; a proclamation that would eventually wash away but hold true forever, he thought. And he stuck his hands in the pockets of his lobster-red tuxedo pants and continued walking toward home.

Not long after Truman’s prophesizing at the old theater, a car came by and drove up slowly beside him as he walked. He turned to quickly look and then back again. He had no idea who it was or what they wanted. Maybe it was just someone lost and they wanted some directions, Truman thought. But then he realized the car looked somewhat familiar to him.

Then whoever was in the car honked the horn. Truman stopped. The passenger-side window slid down and a beautiful head leaned over and called out to him. “Hey, Truman! What are you doing?”

It was Maggie Barrymore.

Truman was shocked as he moved closer to the car and looked in. The smell of her perfumed, glossy life pleasantly assaulted his face.

“I’m walking home,” he nervously said. “I just got some ice cream.”

Then she laughed at him. “What’s with the wild tux?”

“I had a very important luncheon in Lincoln,” he said, and he straightened up with a sense of pride. He wanted to impress her. “At Red Lobster.”

Maggie Barrymore laughed at him again. “Red Lobster? You went all the way to Lincoln to eat at Red Lobster?”

“Yes,” Truman snapped, somewhat annoyed and not understanding why that seemed so ridiculous to her.

“Okay… I can give you a ride if you want.”

Truman’s eyes darted all around the interior of her nice car. It was clean. It smelled good. The stereo was playing some kind of poppy dance music that he didn’t know anything about. “You don’t mind?” he said. “I mean, you won’t get in trouble for hanging out with a co-worker. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job.”

“No.” She shrugged her smooth, bare shoulders. “It’s Sunday. It’s my day off. No one can tell me what I can or can’t do. Hop in.”

Truman pulled on the door and got in. That girlish smell of the car really got to him, and his heart started thumping. He was with a woman. A real woman. He looked over at her. She was wearing very short pants and he quickly glanced down at her long, lean legs as they worked the pedals. He had to turn away from her and glance out the window.

“You look different without your office clothes,” Truman told her.

“Yeah, I must look like a bum, but hey, it’s my day off, right? But I got to tell you… You look pretty sharp in that tux.”

“Thanks. I figured, hey, it’s Red Lobster. I got to look my best.”

She bit at her bottom lip as she looked over at him. “That’s cool. Were you with friends?”

“No, just by myself. Well, I was with a friend, but we had a disagreement and went our separate ways. The bottom line is, I don’t have any real friends. No one likes me.”

“Oh, Truman. I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It’s true.”

“I like you, and I could be your friend,” she said with a sultry tone almost, and she took her hand and moved it to his leg and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You can never have too many friends, right?”

“Aw, you’re just saying that because you feel sorry for me. And you didn’t want anything to do with me the other day.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry I acted like a jerk. I guess I was having a bad day. I do like you and I mean it when I say I want us to be friends.”

Truman tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “I would really like that,” he said to her.

“All right then,” Maggie said with a playful bob of her head. “Let’s be friends.”

Truman suddenly got excited by an idea. “Hey. After you drop me off… Would you like to come in and watch some Seinfeld with me.” He was sure she would immediately reject the idea. But then she didn’t.

“Sounds like fun,” she said.

“Really!?”

“Sure. I could use a few laughs… And some company.”

Truman noticed she suddenly looked a bit sad. “Is something wrong?”

She shook it off with a gentle smile. “No… Just some man trouble.”

Truman leaned back in his seat, somewhat dejected. “You have a boyfriend, huh? I guess that’s not surprising.”

“I wouldn’t say boyfriend. It’s more like recreation,” she said with a laugh. “But you know, relationships of any kind aren’t always easy.”

“Hmm,” Truman hummed. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. Not really.”

She proceeded cautiously with her next question. “You’ve never been in a relationship before?”

“No,” Truman answered. “Can’t say I have.”

Then she chuckled as if he was kidding. “You’ve never had a girlfriend?”

“No, Maggie. I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

“Your entire life?”

“Nope.”

“Truman,” she said sympathetically. “That’s terrible.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So… Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Truman turned to look at her. He noticed her lips and thought how well-versed in love they must be. “No. Not in real life.”

Maggie put a hand to her stomach like she was hurting. “That’s so sad.”

“You can turn right at the next block, and then the second right and all the way to the end,” Truman said, and he emitted a soft laugh. “I live at the end of the road.”

When they pulled into the driveway, Maggie shut the car down and turned to look at Truman. “Wait,” she said, and she moved closer to him, held him by the back of the head and pulled him in for his first real kiss.

When their lips parted, Truman relished the cool wetness that lingered. “Damn, Miss Maggie,” he said. “I had no idea it would feel so wonderful. I think my heart is going to explode.”

She giggled and looked down between his legs. “I think something else is about to explode,” she said with a smile. “Let’s go inside.”

NOT YET THE END

Author’s Note: I had fully intended this to be the last installment of this story, but lo and behold, it is not. It has a life of its own. Thanks for reading and keep checking cerealaftersex.com for more on The Lobster Guy. I’ll wrap it up soon.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Karen’s Volcanic Cakehole

I knew the moment I slid out of the back seat of a fox’s taupe Kia that the woman in the parking lot was evil. She had a sour look on her face, as if she just sucked the life out of a lemon like a Vegas call girl. I knew right away that she probably had the personality of a chainsaw. She eyed us and then took a marching stance and raced us to the entrance of the cellular phone store.

I could smell trouble in the air the moment we pulled the door open and there was a cluster of folks waiting for service. The crowd seemed like they were overflowing with Christmas spirit, you know, moody as charcoal and chock full of frustration. I stuck close to my wife for protection because she’s the beautiful tough one. She stands up for what’s right.

The voice of the stern woman from the parking lot suddenly rose above everything else as she spoke to one of the salespeople as if she were at an angry political protest.

“This is about my business account. I want someone competent!” she whined for all to hear. “I am tired of waiting on the phone for three or four hours just to get someone who doesn’t speak English!”

Oh, boy, I thought.

My wife turned to look at me and gave me the closed eyes shake of the head. We both can’t stand this type of obnoxious, self-righteous, ignorant and bigoted ass hat with a skewed sense of entitlement. Especially at Christmas. Merry Christmas, Karen! Santa Claus hates you.

Why is she yelling at the poor guy who’s just trying to make a meager living selling cell phones? Gee whiz, Karen. Why don’t you go shake your fists and yell at the corporate gods who outsource those types of jobs to foreign countries in the first place. Despite what you may think, Karen, they don’t really care about you and all your frivolous first-world problems. Not at all. It’s about the money. Only the money. Consider taking an international business course and educate yourself about the world around you, Karen. But then again, I suppose if you had a professor from Suriname, you’d lose your shit.

The funny thing is the guy she ended up have help her had a foreign accent and look about him. Serves you right, Karen. Good god, be a human being for once in your life.

But she was fuming. She was rabid. Having to stand there and listen to her continuous berating of the clerk as he feverishly worked to solve her problems (which were most likely due to her own ignorance) was like going down a scorching hot metal playground slide littered with broken glass and landing in a giant tub of rubbing alcohol. It stung.

Side note: In my days, most of the playground equipment we had was made of metal, like pipes strung together, and why did no one ever realize that was pretty dangerous. Anyways, the slide parts of our playground slides were metal as well, slick aluminum maybe? Not sure. But in the summer the metal would get very, very hot and burn your skin when you went down. Painful childhood memories indeed.

I tried not to listen to the woman, but that was difficult because she was at the counter right next to where we were being helped by a full-on white American dude who was very competent in doing his job. I bet Karen was so jealous.

I myself am always shocked by the behavior of some people in public. But then again, I’m not. I would never in my life consider raising my voice to a clerk in a store, especially spewing commentary peppered with bigotry aimed toward people who happen to live and work in another country. The world is way bigger than you and your phone problems, Karen. Get your head out of your ass and take a look around.

I know I’m being pretty salty about this whole situation, but why shouldn’t I be. It pisses me off when people act this way. Most of what is wrong in this world stems directly from how horrible human beings treat each other on this planet – a huge space we all share.

All one has to do is look at the news or scroll through Facebook or Tic Tac Toe or whatever social media platform is hot at the moment and a lot of what you see is nothing but people casting hateful jabs at one another.

From Russia jabbing Ukraine to Karen jabbing the phone store clerk and all the other jabs in between, there’s a lot of hateful, petty bitterness in the air. And for what? Why? Why are we killing each other!? For what!? So you can get a little more for yourself while your neighbor gets tossed in a mass grave? Ugh. I don’t understand. All we have is each other, yet we act as if we don’t care.

Well, that took a dark turn. But in my mind, Karen is no better than the Vladimir Putins of the world. No better at all. Their pointless wars are just smaller. My only solace at times is that I know I have the love of a wonderful woman and everything she is and does.

So, Karen, wherever you are right now, I’m sure you are totally oblivious to the fact you made a complete ass of yourself and that myself and many others in the phone store that day think very little of you. I’m sure you are completely unaware that a complete stranger has penned a social commentary piece based solely on your ill behavior and dangerous playground equipment. Touche. That’s French, Karen. I’m sure you have a problem with that, too.

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Lobster Guy (Nine)

Truman Humboldt’s guts bathed in the euphoric afterglow of a fine midday meal at Red Lobster as the car gently hummed west along Interstate 80 in Nebraska back toward the rubbish town of Neptune and lonely home.

Truman looked over at the lobster ghost glowing like a soft red x-ray in the passenger seat. He hadn’t said much since they had left the restaurant. He seemed to be deep in lobster thought. Truman worried something might be wrong.

“Is there somewhere you’d like me to drop you off?” Truman asked to break the quiet, wondering if the lobster ghost was planning to stick around forever.

The apparition came out of his meditative state and turned to smile at him. “No. I will dissipate when the time is right.”

Truman wasn’t sure what to make of that and looked straight ahead at the line of asphalt stretching out long and flat toward the bare and bone-colored horizon. “I wanted to thank you for encouraging me to apply for a job at Red Lobster. I’m very hopeful about it. I feel good. I sense a bright future is ahead of me.”

“I feel good about it as well,” the lobster ghost replied. “I’m very proud of you for putting yourself out there, for having some confidence in yourself for a change. I truly believe you will be greatly rewarded in the end.”

Truman nodded his head in agreement. “You know, I have so many things going through my head right now, but I’ve been seriously thinking… And once I get my foot in the door at Red Lobster and really show them who I am and what I can do, I’m going to see about getting a transfer to Maine. Maine!”

“That’s a lofty goal, Truman. A lofty yet wonderful goal… But don’t you think you should get the job first?”

They both laughed out loud.

“Right,” Truman said, and he smiled bright as a rainbow as he gripped the steering wheel. “Would you like to listen to my Ocean Sounds CD again?”

“Yes. Let’s get lost in the sounds of water along our journey through this desolate place of dust and dirt. But first I feel there is one important thing we still need to discuss.”

“What’s that?” Truman wondered aloud.

“Maggie Barrymore.”

“What about her?”

“What should be done with her.”

“What do you mean… Done with her?”

“Oh, come on, Truman,” the lobster ghost started off, his tone more ominous than it’s ever been. “Are you seriously going to just let her stomp on your heart such as she did without the slightest retaliation? Where’s your sense of personal pride and self-esteem? Where’s your sense of revenge? You deserved better from her, and you didn’t get it. She threw a fistful of mud in your face. She humiliated you. That’s unforgiveable.”

Truman sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, and yes, I acknowledge the depth of emotional pain I have suffered at her hands and other body parts, but sometimes a man has to take the higher road. Sometimes a man has to just get over it and move on… And that’s what I plan on doing. Move on.”

“Well, of course it’s easy to say that now, Truman,” the lobster ghost tried to explain. “Your head is in the clouds. But what about further along the road when you come back down to Earth. What about when you are sitting all alone in your house in Maine and those painful memories of Maggie Barrymore come creeping in and claw at your guts. Hmm? Life won’t be too enjoyable then. You’ll regret not putting her in her proper place when you had the chance. You’ll be drowning in regret, and regret, my friend, is never a pleasant thing.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Truman asked with a snort and an awkward laugh. “Kill her?”

The lobster ghost’s long-winded silence was answer enough for Truman.

“What!? I can’t kill somebody,” he protested. “That’s taking it a bit too far… Way too far. And I simply won’t do it!”

“But you must!” the lobster ghost cried out, trying to steer his thinking in a different direction. “Think back, Truman. Think of the betrayal. Think of how she treated you. Think of that despicable Mr. Guldencock slobbering all over her. Think about how she liked it, Truman. Think about how she cast you off like a piece of trash at the zoo while she favored him. Why, her heart is colder than the North Atlantic in January. She doesn’t deserve to live. But you, my friend, you deserve a full life, a life unencumbered by the stinging pain of shattered love. You deserve all the success and happiness the world has to offer… But you’ll never have it as long as that stain in your life exists. Snuff it out, Truman. Make things right. Restore the balance. Blot her from this Earth.”

Truman suddenly slowed down and pulled to the side of the highway. He roughly pushed the car’s shifter to P and let the engine idle.

“What are you doing?” the lobster ghost demanded to know.

“I think this is where you should get out,” Truman said with an uncharacteristic degree of authority. “I’m not going to kill her. You’ll never get me to do it… And if you were truly my friend, you wouldn’t force such a thing upon me. I’m not a killer. I’m a lover of lobster. I’m a lover of life!”

“So, this it then, huh?” the lobster ghost said, shaking his head at Truman. “You’re just going to leave me on the side of the highway in Nebraska,” and he glanced out the window for a moment. “Without even a puddle of leftover rainwater to soak myself in. Hmm. Some friend you are, all right. Some friend indeed.”

“Don’t try to make me feel bad,” Truman snapped. “You don’t even really exist. You’re in my head. But now I want you out.”

“All right, Truman,” the lobster ghost said as he undid his seatbelt and moved a claw toward the door handle. “But let me just say this. I hope when the day comes, and it will come, that you are writhing in unbearable emotional pain over one Maggie Barrymore, so much so that you’ll just want to snuff it, I do truly hope that you’ll look back on this day and say: ‘Wow. I should have listened to him. He was right. I should have done her in.’ But, you surely have it all figured out, don’t you. You’re going to be a big Red Lobster hot shot and your life is going to be perfect… Just like in the commercials, huh?” The lobster ghost laughed out loud. “Commercials are nothing but lies, Truman. Lies.”

“Why are you going on and on like this?” Truman asked. “It’s over. It’s done with. You’re not going to rain on my lobster parade any longer. Now get out.”

The fluid roar of the intestate rose and seeped in when the lobster ghost opened the passenger-side door, and then it quickly became muffled again when he slammed the door shut from the other side. Truman put the car in gear and pulled back onto the interstate in a gunning, gravel-spitting peel out.

FINAL EPISODE COMING SOON

By
Aaron Echoes August

You can read all the previous parts of this story at cerealaftersex.com.
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (American Soil)

Photo by Aidan Roof on Pexels.com.

The Other Side of the Door

By mid-afternoon, the sun was flaring its nostrils and spitting fire and when I walked out of the rough cantina in Juarez, I had to shade my eyes because the light stung them like a burning wasp.

I stumbled into the tide of people and turned this way and that in a state of confusion trying to determine which way it was to the border. I saw the policeman, walking slowly against the flow of people, and I saw his eyes fix on me and Anton Chico panicked for a second, moved to the edge of the flustered queue and stood against the hot stucco of a building until the officer passed.

I knew it was time to get out of the country; the paranoia was creeping in again and I felt an attack coming on. I swiftly moved back into the flow of people and headed straight for the crossover. When I reached it, I deposited a quarter and pushed my way through the turnstile and sighed with relief when I saw the buildings of El Paso, cloaked in heavy and hot smog, just beyond the crest of the bridge.

I walked fast. The sweat was pouring out of me like someone had gently squeezed a sponge. I smelled like the remnants of a wild fiesta. That familiar ache in my head and the churning in my belly began to rise and I was dying for a drink of water. Agua.

I stopped outside the checkpoint building, where the Mexicans show their green cards, and smoked a cigarette watching the herd of people moving along like desperate and bewildered cattle. I crushed the smoke on the ground and joined them. I had no green card but showed the officer my American driver’s license.

“American citizen?” he asked with a stern look.

“Yes.”

He moved me through, and on the other side of the doorway was America.

Swallowed by the Night

No soul to touch, no voice to caress, no hand to crush to dust. The little car hummed along the highway at dusk headed toward home. El Paso faded like a dream behind me. I was feeling a bit sad having to leave that place. As big and dirty and electrified as it was, I began to miss it; or in all actuality, miss the being away from the doldrums, getting more doldrum by the day, and the ache in my belly began to roar again as I thought about having to return to my shaved-face reality; my 4 p.m. check-in and well-behaved, well-dressed mannerisms.

It was all soaking fake and dull and leaving me shaking with a shame about my own false reality and pious lies and imperfections seething through the cracks in my well-oiled skin as I desperately tried so hard not to break down and scream and rant and rave and cry up a mad tempest all down my sweaty, shaking face as I smiled, feigned smiling, for the camera, the camera called the eyes and lies of every beating heart human that surrounded my very bland every day activities.

The blood in my veins boiled, the acid in my stomach fizzed, the marrow in my bones bubbled, the curvatures across my brain pulsed, rhythmic creation in an underskirt, my diary of madness scratched on the inside of my eyes in a calligrapher’s black ink.

It was dark as death as I pulled into my space at the complex and killed the engine. The moon was full and beaming down through the tall treetops like something out of a famous love story. I opened the car door and reluctantly trudged my pack with me up the short steps to the door. I fumbled with my key in the lock and pushed the door in. Black silence came over me. My fingers fumbled for the light switch and when thus the place became illuminated it was no brighter than when it was completely dark.

The place smelled as if it had been vacant for months; stale, dry rot, cumbersome, old, gray, nicotine smeared and cold. I set my things down and went to my favorite living room window, the tall and narrow one, pulled aside the curtains and opened it. The vacant lot outside was just as I had left it. A car rumbled down the road. I looked at the scattered remains of porch lights at this late hour. A dog barked. A bug of some sort slammed himself against the screen and then fluttered off dismayed. I sighed and went into the bathroom to shower.

The blaring sun woke me up. The curtains were thin and an ungodly melon color – bed sheets really – and I threw the blanket off me because I was already beginning to sweat. So some words about that unholy oppressive heat I had come to so despise during my desert life:

The heat was like an arrow of fire, like a spike dipped in burning coals thrust through the flesh at high speed, like hell, like an oven, like crisp and dead leaves beneath a Boy Scout’s microscope… The relentless ball of fire hung in the sky like the devil’s eye, unleashing its burn down upon the land, the desolate harrowing land of death and solidness, of pain and captivity, a burrowing fever that boiled the brain and cooked the buildings and the asphalt, a harrowing, searing blaze boiling all in its path, an unending glare, the fireball coated white hot and spitting its hot lust down upon the earth in every spot I stood; there was no relief, no shelter from the sun that never hid its face from view, always there, always hanging there like a hot jewel ripe to burn the skin right off your bones.

It made the town more depressing than it already was; at least the rain would of washed some of the sin away, but no, not here in this place, no rain, just wind and dust and hot, everything dry as dead bone, every drop of moisture sucked from the living; the river ran so slow and shallow and brown, the sun sipping every morsel of wet from the land’s soul and the skins of humans dry and cracking, wiped over with lotions and moisturizers every morning and then one would step outside and simply burn, burn, burn… The beads of sweat came forth suddenly and poured down one’s face; a sick, laborious heat that pushed the boundaries of human endurance far over the edge, where one would kill for a place in front of a breeze, one would kill for an ice cube or a fan or an Alaskan vacation.

I and others like me would sleep draped in our own sweat because even once the sun did fall for the night the temperature would remain high; the heat, absorbed by the buildings and the streets and the earth, would be belched back out to recycle its pain throughout the darkness, a warm velvet glove cupped over the city swatting away any attempt of coolness trying to come down and breathe upon us all; the heat, there was just no escape – the swamp coolers hummed and rumbled but not a dent would they manage to carve into the grip of suffocation.

See more of the Chronicles of Anton Chico at cerealaftersex.com. Thank you for reading and supporting independent writers and publishers. Be sure to subscribe by entering your email below for updates on new posts. It’s free to follow! Thank you.

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By
Aaron Echoes August
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (The Dragon)

I walked out of the dusty shop in Juarez with my two postcards and headed up the street. It was nearly noon, and the sun was thrusting down its fiery tentacles and burning the whole place up. At the end of the block, I turned the corner, passing by pharmacies and cheap-looking stores with posters and magazines and greasy smells.

At the end of the next block, I crossed the busy street. A bus was blocking traffic and I just moved with the crowd. A woman walked suspiciously close to me, and I moved away, over to a small square across the way where men were feeding a huge flock of pigeons.

I sat on a low wall and watched them tossing down dried corn on the ground or breadcrumbs or whatever it was. There were more buses clogging up the streets. I was glad I wasn’t driving, I would have gone mad.

Across the way from the square was a building made of dark brown brick, a smooth stone arch around the doorway. It was some kind of a palace for some king unlike me. It didn’t really look like a palace, but it was called a palace.

There was a mother walking with her two small boys. I sat on the wall taking pictures of all the surroundings like some lame tourist, and then felt odd so I stopped. I felt I was drawing attention to myself, and I did not want to do that, so I just sat there and watched, my head drooping down a bit out of habit, and I looked at the dirty ground.

I began to think if I was ever going to feel happy again. Seemed no matter how hard I pushed my thoughts and feelings in a positive direction, they just never went there. It was as if I was somehow always on the precipice between darkness and light and could just not get my leg over that highest rail. It was defeating and frustrating. Having to feign a smile for one’s whole life is not a good way to live, now is it, Anton Chico.

It was getting hotter still and I felt sticky and greasy all over. I wanted a shower. I thought of the girl in the room above the shop and wondered what she was doing right now. I pictured some UTEP college boy slobbering all over her and I imagined she hated it, but poppa didn’t hate it as he stood around downstairs collecting all that American dough. He loved it, but did he love her? I wouldn’t think so, but then again maybe they do things differently down here.

I stood up and walked away from the square and toward a park where they had a market going on. Rows of canvass covered cubicles spread out on the lawn crammed full of all kinds of cheap junk, trinkets, and souvenirs. I strolled through, but I did not buy anything. I was worried about exposing my wallet.

I kept on walking, back down to the main drag I came in on and turned back toward the border. When I saw a Mexican cop walking around, I got nervous. I heard stories about Mexican cops locking American dudes away in some crummy jail for months on end for doing barely anything. I was worried; Anton Chico is always worried and that is not a good state of mind to be in.

I turned into a kind of open mall. They had a Burger King there along with a bunch of dress shops. I just walked through, came out on the other side, and continued walking toward the border, the cop now behind me rather than in front of me.

Someone tugged on my sleeve. I looked down to see a small boy showing me his open hand and, in his palm, sat a few coins, foreign coins. He talked in Spanish but the only word I understood was “hamburger.” He wanted to buy a hamburger, but he did not have enough money. He looked sad, dirty, and desperate. I pulled out my wallet and gave him two dollars. He looked at me and grinned wide. I watched him run off.

I slipped into a colorful cantina in the shadows of a side street and ordered a drink at the bar.

“Beer. Tequila.”

I slammed the shot, chased it with the beer. The place wasn’t very crowded. There were a few Mexican dudes drinking at the end of the bar and talking amongst themselves. There was an older Mexican dude sitting closer to me sipping on a beer and watching Mexican TV.

Anton Chico could get carried away with the drink at times. It was tucked down in the alien DNA somewhere, and now I was spilling bills onto the bar. I downed shot after shot and began feeling very warm, as if my soul was walking on the surface of the sun. Then I got sad and wanted to cry about all that tarnished love that had gotten in the way of the perfect American dream. But it was no dream. It was brutal reality of the ball-shattering kind. I straightened myself out and returned to the present. The here and now. The only place one can be.

I wanted strange music and went to the dusty old jukebox and slipped in some coins, pushed some buttons, and then went back to my stool at the bar. A moment later, some weepy western tune came crawling out of the machine like a skeleton from a grave and I lit another cigarette as more desperados entered the cantina and clambered noisily around me.

Smoke and loud talk filled the joint. I could hear a cue ball being smacked around in the back, rolling across some beat up table and the desperados cheering it on.

Everyone was getting drunk and lucid and parading around the joint like they were on some great fucking holiday or junkie acid trip. It was becoming a fiesta. Anton Chico suddenly became sad again and huddled closer to the bar and bowed his head in painful drunken prayer.

In the dim reverence he let more of the strong drink run down to his belly and then to his brain where it sloshed around like a warm sea tide and as he looked out his blurry and wet eyes, through the smoke clouds, through the laughter coming from the mouths of those with bad teeth and unruly facial hair, he wondered, as he often did, if he had hit rock bottom once again.

See more of the Chronicles of Anton Chico at cerealaftersex.com. Thank you for reading and supporting independent writers and publishers. Be sure to subscribe by entering your email below for updates on new posts. It’s free to follow! Thank you.

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By
Aaron Echoes August
The Crowns of Pluto (2.)

The Paper People

I never had sleeping dreams on Earth. When I told people that, they looked at me as if something must be wrong with me, that I must have some sort of brain malfunction. Yes, that’s true. There is something wrong with me. Maybe that’s why they put me on a spaceship and sent me to Pluto. Maybe the God of Time wanted me to find my dreams somewhere else.

“What an awful thing to not dream,” my tense and terse mother used to say to me before she died. “I didn’t give birth to you just so you would never dream.”

I don’t know why she would say such a thing, but she did. She was a “Dubuque Queen.” That is, she was a woman who was all about the local society scene in Dubuque, Iowa. That’s where I was born and grew up before I left home and became a Starman. I made a sign and have it in my quarters and it reads: DUBUQUE 3,600,000,000, and it has an arrow pointing in the general direction of Earth.

My mother was very much a woman geared toward gatherings and festivities and church activities and so on and so on. I remember watching from the lonely shadows of our home as her ladies’ groups would gather in our living room to gossip and chitter about whatever they were chittering about. Casseroles. Widows. The milkman. None of it ever seemed very important to me, but it was surely very important to my mother. Seemingly much more important than me. Those are the times I would hideaway in my room and sit by the window and look up at the stars, even during the day and when they were not out.

I think my mother’s growing resentment for my existence really exploded after my father left. I wish I had been able to go with him, but my mother wouldn’t have it, not because she wanted to love and protect me, but because she was worried about how it would make her look to the world. But none of that matters now because I am the only man on Pluto, but at least I am beginning to dream.

The dreams that come to me now are wildly vivid and stay with me for days. For the most part, the dreams are not unsettling. But there are visions that come to me during the night that at times are, and when I suddenly wake and sit right up in a startled panic, the same beings casting about in my dream are somehow still there.

I catch a quick glimpse of them as they slip through the walls and out into the vast complex that is Station Kronos Kuiper where I believe they wander like ghosts. They look like ghosts; like childhood ghosts created by bleached bedsheets. They are indeed white, but it is not a pure white. It is the white of a being that does not live in a perfect afterlife. It is a worn white, a torn white, an unraveled white, a used white, a wrinkled white. I suppose they still encounter struggles. I call them the Paper People. I call them that because it appears as if they are wrapped in paper from head to toe. There are two small slits where the eyes sit, and they are permanently squinting. They like to confer with dark skeletons.

Maybe I’m just losing my mind and they aren’t real at all. I would think that would be a very easy thing for a person to do in such isolation and so far from everyone and everything I have ever known. I’m not really sure how I handle it, I just do. I suppose I let my mind slip like tectonic plates. It’s a natural thing. It’s geological psychosis. I wonder at what point my insanity will crumble me to pieces.

I try not to dwell on it. I try to make it a priority to busy myself in one way or another. I take long walks through the now hollow corridors. I explore. I do maintenance checks. I eat. I go to the bathroom. I read. We have a vast library here on Pluto. It’s all digital in white and blue. It’s all electric magic. I can call up just about anything I want.

There are times that I feel as if I’m just filling in the gaps between birth and death. But then I thought about it deeply and realized that is what we are all doing. Now, we all fill these great gaps in various degrees, of course. Some have lives full of wonderful experiences, wealth, love, happiness, divinity. Others may rot in a prison for 50 years because of a very bad day. But even still, up here on the fringes of our solar system, life has become even larger, wider, grander.

Yet it makes me feel miniscule, a grain of salt caught up in the winds of the astral plane. Even so, I wish I still had someone to share it with. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel so small if I were bound to someone. It would be wonderful to be able to share all these wonders I witness, and it would be wonderful to crawl into someone when I feel broken. Why do I wish for so many things that I know will never be? At least in this particular life.

I wonder if I will become one of the Paper People in the end and rattle these icy halls for eternity. I must stop thinking about the end. I will go to the great garden we have here, and I will breathe for today, and I will relish in life.

Author’s note: This is the second piece of this play-around project. Read the first part HERE or visit cerealaftersex.com. I hope to craft more of this story over time as an experiment in writing some science fiction, or something like that. Thanks for reading and supporting independent content creators who just want to do what they love to do.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (A Mexican moon)

The Inhuman Wall

I sat in the back of the hotel van as the Mexican man drove me to the border. He was playing Mexican music on the radio and speaking into a CB handset of some sort once in a while. He was telling his comrades on the other side: “Here I come with another gringo! Get your baseball bats ready you fuckers!” That’s what I thought.

It was at times like these that Anton Chico wished he had known how to speak Spanish, or at least understood some of it, especially with those bruisers on the other end waiting for me. I shifted uncomfortably in the seat and looked out the windows at all the chaos I had just come through myself earlier.

So, I should have turned there, but I didn’t, and the van pulled into a lot, and I thought to myself, “Well, this is it. They’re going to club me, and I’ll be done for. My keys, my camera, my wallet and I’ll wake up handcuffed to a bed with a dirty mattress in some dingy room with thin curtains and a half empty bottle of tequila sitting on a wobbly table and there sitting in the chair by the table will be this Mexican girl, big brown breasts exposed smoking a cigarette and staring at me like I was some sort of villain and then in would walk her John Boy in a stained wife beater t-shirt and having a big, black, bushy moustache and holding a switchblade and he’d come at me, cursing at me in Spanish, flailing the sharp blade all around in front of me, slicing the air, then he catches my cheek and I can feel the warm trickle start rolling down my damp face like a maroon tear and flow into my mouth.”

“We’re here,” the driver said as he always does, and he got out of the van, came around the other side and slid the door open. I stepped out and handed him $3.

“Gracias, senor,” he said, and got back into the van and drove away, leaving me there right on the razor’s edge between two very different nations. I was immediately approached by another man who had been waiting in the lot.

“You need senorita?” he asked. “Twenty dollars and I take you to senorita. Pretty senorita. My taxi right there, $20.”

“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I’m going to walk over the bridge. I want to go across on the bridge. Walk.” And I pointed toward the bridge. He looked at me like I was crazy. He seemed so disappointed.

I fell into the queue crossing over. I deposited 35 cents and stepped across. Now above me the Mexican flag painted the sky in the wind. I looked over the edge of the bridge and saw the muddy trickle of the Rio Grande piddle through. I saw the great barriers designed to keep the undesirables out rise up at its American shore. The sign deciphered: This is America. No illegal aliens, only illegal activity by our own is accepted.

Those barriers, those watch towers, those rows of razor wire are grim reminders of human selfishness, the God negative and gluttony, hypocritical pride and the suffering in its wake. On one side of the barriers, perfumed buttoned-up crooked sophistos drive to lunch in a polished Mercedes; on the other side, a starving man drinks himself senseless on a dirt road while the stars and the sadness spin. If only for an opportunity, but they don’t pass out opportunity like political payoffs.

Anton Chico suffers from a debilitating mental illness. When happiness should be sweet, it is sour for him. When love should be beautiful, it becomes a desperate crawl along the cold kitchen floor crying out in emotional pain for him. When human contact should be soft, it is like petting a dragon kitten of thorns for him. Everything hurts, everything aches, a narrow tunnel lined with dark light and harrowing thoughts of soiled innocence. It is physically exhausting and now I cannot get over the wall that they never did build. Such heartless, godless stupidity.

I was there. Stepping across the imaginary line that separates one way of life from another. The street was packed with people shuffling in and out, up and down. Ratty store fronts lined the way. Spanish language signs everywhere. Green and orange and sky-blue facades with painted black lettering. In every doorway stood someone desperate to sell me something. Desperate for the American money they could use on the American side to buy things made in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Honduras. To buy clothes sewn together by the sore fingers of their not-so-distant relatives in another, oppressed land just like their own. There were more offers to meet a “sweet senorita” upstairs for $20. “She’ll make you feel so good senor. Do you not want to feel good?”

There I was, sticking out like a flashing American beacon. They could smell me. They could see me in my red ball cap, my faded striped shirt and faded shorts exposing my whiteness, my 17 days unshaved and a Pentax film camera slung around my neck. And then I wondered as I walked, where were all the other Americans? Where were all the others just like me flowing across? But then I remembered, as I was crossing over, there were no others. I was immersed in the clan. It was a weekday, and these were all simple workers and shoppers streaming back into their homeland and I suddenly felt all alone, a poster on the white wall. I no longer felt so at ease.

I stepped inside a relatively safe looking shop; bare and dusty and two men hunched over the counter. One sprung on me as soon as I entered.

“What are you looking for? Some jewelry? Something nice for your girlfriend?”

“I don’t have a girlfriend. Not anymore. Just some postcards. Do you have postcards?”

“Postcards! We have postcards. Here, I will show you.”

He took me to a wobbly spinner rack of muddy brass that held a few faded, dry looking postcards. I grabbed two.

“Fifty cents. Nothing else? No senorita?” He motioned with his head toward a staircase. “My daughter. You will like her.”

I set the postcards down on the counter along with one dollar. I stood for a minute thinking, looking out the grimy glass window to the hot, bustling street. The whole place smelled like greasepaint, and I could feel the greasepaint on my face. The grease clogging my fat pores. The sweat stinging my pale skin. I lifted the red ball cap from my head and wiped the wetness from my brow.

“I’m so sweaty,” I said to the man.

“Everybody sweaty. Don’t worry, she’ll take good care of you.”

I set twenty dollars on the counter and the man smiled. He motioned me to stand there while he went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted something up in Spanish. An agitated female voice shouted something back down. He came back over to me.

“Upstairs. You can go now.”

He tapped his worn wristwatch with the tips of his fingers.

“30 minutes,” he said, and I went to the stairs and climbed them slowly.

I heard crackling Mexican radio songs flowing down the stairwell. It grew hotter as I climbed, and I wondered how they tolerated it. At the top of the stairs was a doorway to the left. I looked in. It was a bathroom. Hot, not too clean. There was a short hallway and at the end of the hallway was a flowery curtain covering a doorway. I touched the soft fabric and pulled it aside. Inside the room was a single bed covered in crumpled white sheets. Next to the bed stood a small table and on the table a few glasses, a half-empty bottle of brown alcohol, and an ashtray littered with lipstick-stained butts.

The room had two windows spaced closely together. They were open, ratty, flowered sheets for curtains languidly flopping in the light breeze. It was very hot in the room and the sweat was pouring out of me. I saw a cloud of smoke spurt forth from another corner of the room. A girl was sitting in a chair, a yellow towel wrapped around her body, her hair was dark, flowing and wet. Her large brown eyes stared up at me in a kind of hopeless, loving and lost way. Her brown skin was dimpled with sweat or maybe water from a shower she just took. I watched her take a drag on the cigarette tightly clamped in her full, bare lips. She smiled after she exhaled and motioned for me to sit on the bed.

“Cigarette?” I asked her. I had my own, but for some reason I wanted one of hers.

She tossed me her pack and I pulled one out. She tossed me a book of matches and I lit it. I waved out the match and dropped it in the ashtray and then sat halfway in the windowsill next to her chair so that I could see inside and outside. I didn’t want to sit on the bed. I could feel the heat on my shoulder and the greasepaint smell was rising again. I could taste the smog on my tongue. Off in the distance I could hear traffic – honking horns, gunning motors, people yelling in Spanish. The girl sat emotionless, staring off into space as she held the cigarette between her fingers, the smoke flowing from the tip of it like a bluish whisper. We sat there in silence for half an hour looking at a Mexican moon that wasn’t even there. She didn’t seem to mind, and neither did I. I looked out the window one last time, and then I got up and walked out. She never said goodbye.

See more of the Chronicles of Anton Chico at cerealaftersex.com. Thank you for reading and supporting independent writers and publishers. Be sure to subscribe by entering your email below for updates on new posts. It’s free to follow! Thank you.

Type your email…

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
The Lobster Guy (Eight)

Maggie the waitress cowered in the shadows of a Red Lobster in Lincoln, Nebraska, and watched Truman Humboldt from a distance. She chewed on her fingernails and spit out the pieces onto the wild cranberry and lemon grass patterned carpeting. The small hostess with the long black hair noticed her. “What are you looking at so nervously and intently?”

“That man at table 15,” Maggie began in a hushed voice. “He’s so strange and awful. You should have heard the way he talked to me.”

The hostess stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck to look. “Oh, God. The guy with the red tuxedo? What a whack-a-doodle. Do you know I caught him sticking his head in the lobster tank?”

“What!?”

“Yes. Lucky me.”

“I don’t know if I can go back to his table,” Maggie said. “He’s crushing my positive Red Lobster vibe, and I’m just not okay with that.”

The two watched from the other side of the restaurant as Truman carried on a conversation with an invisible being from another dimension.

“Did you meet his imaginary friend?” the hostess asked with a laugh, gently elbowing Maggie in the side.

“Yes… And just what am I supposed to do about that?”

“Play along and take his order.”

Maggie the waitress clenched her fists and looked up at the ceiling. “Why me, Jesus? Why do I always get the weirdos.”

Satisfied with his selections, Truman closed the menu and sighed a happy little sigh. “Now, where is that Saggy Maggie with our drinks? I’m parched.”

“Just be patient, Truman,” the lobster ghost said as he continued to peruse the menu. “It’s not like you have to be anywhere.”

“Sorry. I’m a Fidgety Frannie today. Have you decided?”

“I’m torn between the Sailor’s Platter and the Seaside Shrimp Trio.”

“Hmm,” Truman pondered. “That’s a tough choice. Just go with your heart… And your stomach!” He laughed out loud like he had told an amazing joke.

It was just at that moment when Maggie the waitress appeared at the table balancing a tray with two drinks and a basket of cheddar biscuits. “All right guys. I’ve returned with your refreshing beverages… Let’s see, a yummy cranberry Boston iced tea with an orange wedge for you Mr. Fancy Pants, and a super-duper Lobster Turbo Colada with a fun lobster straw for your friend… And, to make your Red Lobster experience even brighter — fresh warm biscuits.” She put a shielding hand to her face and whispered with a smile, “I picked out the very best ones for you all… Don’t let the other guests know.”

Truman held the basket of biscuits to his face and inhaled deeply. “Oh my. They smell divine, Maggie.” He then took a sip of his cranberry Boston iced tea, savoring it with closed eyes. He let out a large audible “Ahhhhhhhhh… Mmm. That’s tasty.”

“So,” Maggie nervously began with a punchy smile, tucking the tray beneath her arm because she was one of those waitresses who could somehow remember everything people ordered without writing it down. “What will we be enjoying for lunch today?”

“I’ve decided to go for it, Saggy Maggie, just like Clark Griswold when he’s humping his wife at that hotel in National Lampoon’s Vacation,” Truman said with snickering odd delight. “I’m going to have the Ultimate Feast with mashed potatoes and a Caesar salad.”

“Ohhhhh,” Maggie said, very impressed and with her vibrant pink mouth shaped like the letter O. “That is the ultimate choice for seafood lovers!” She chuckled and then abruptly stopped when she knew that she was about to have to take the order of Truman’s imaginary friend. She looked at the empty side of the booth and forced a smile. “And for you?”

There was an uncomfortable slice of silence. Maggie the waitress cleared her throat and asked again in a slower, more volumized voice, “What would you like to eat for lunch today?”

“Gee whiz, Saggy Maggie,” Truman snorted. “He’s not deaf.”

“Well, then could you please ask him what he’d like… I don’t seem to be making the proper impression.”

Truman sighed in frustration. “Fine. But let it be known Saggy Maggie that you are sort of putting a damper on our Red Lobster experience… And that makes me a sad panda.” Truman looked across the table at the ghost lobster. “So. What’s it going to be, friend?”

There was another uncomfortable slice of silence as Truman turned his ear to listen. He then looked up at Maggie and smiled. “He’ll have the Sailor’s Platter with coleslaw and steamed broccoli.”

Maggie the waitress filed it away in her brain. “Excellent choice,” she said. “I’ll put this order in right away.”

The sound was that of pigs in a pen at the tapping of the evening dinner bell as Truman and the lobster ghost went at their meals like farm animals. There was intense slurping and guggling and grotesque guzzling. Truman’s face was sloppy as he used both hands to shovel the feast into his face.

He stopped to take a breath and looked over at the lobster ghost who was gingerly pinching at his shrimp with both claws and tossing them into his mouth like a machine. “You know what?” Truman said to him. “If I’m ever on death row, could you let it be known that I want Red Lobster as my very last meal. I want to leave this Earth happy.”

The lobster ghost chuckled. “Do you really believe you may end up on death row someday? That’s an excessive and discouraging thought.”

“You never know what could happen,” Truman said, pointing with the tines of his shiny Red Lobster fork. “I could go crazy and hijack a bus and drive it off a cliff or something like that.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about such things, Truman. You seem of sound mind and body to me.”

“Thanks.”

Maggie the waitress returned to the table and forced an ingenuine smile. “My, my, my. You guys are putting it back,” she said jokingly, and then she quickly glanced at the untouched Sailor’s Platter in front of Truman’s imaginary friend and shifted uncomfortably. “Is there anything else I could get you?”

Truman’s eyes darted all over the table as he assessed the eating situation. “I would love another cranberry Boston iced tea if it isn’t too much trouble, Saggy Maggie, and maybe some more napkins!” Truman laughed out loud at his own sloppiness.

Maggie the waitress frowned. “Certainly,” she said, and she about-faced it like a Red Lobster soldier and walked away.

“I really think you should be nicer to her,” the lobster ghost suggested.

“Why? She sucks.”

“She doesn’t suck that bad. And besides, Truman. You may end up working with this person. I think it’s important you make a good impression with these people. Bad behavior lingers in the minds of many.”

“Oh, man. I didn’t think about it that way,” Truman said. “I should probably go apologize.”

“I strongly believe it would be a wise thing to do.”

“Right. You are certainly a bottomless well of wisdom, my creepy friend of the crustaceous kind,” Truman said as he slid from the booth. “I better go take care of this at once before bad things travel too far south. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Truman wandered into the warm Red Lobster kitchen that shined in silver and white. He stood directly behind Maggie the waitress as she checked over plates ready to be served as they sat on a stainless-steel shelf beneath a row of heat lamps. He tapped her on a thick shoulder, and she jumped.

“Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” she wailed, and she turned around. “You scared the beejeebus out of me… Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

A cook in a tall, white chef’s hat who was working the line noticed Truman standing there. “Hey! Customers aren’t allowed back here,” he barked. “Maggie, tell your boyfriend to wait out front or something.”

She turned, embarrassed and addressed the grumpy cook. “He’s not my boyfriend,” and she turned back to look at Truman hovering there. “Definitely not.”

“I’m sorry, Saggy Maggie… I mean, plain old Maggie. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk to me? Is there something wrong with your order?” she asked as she frantically worked.

“No. There’s something wrong with me, and I have something very important to say to you.”

“All right then. But I must get these plates out to my tables right away. Then I will come by to check on you, and we can talk. Okay?”

“Okay,” Truman agreed with a goofy grin on his face as he watched her trot off with an arm full of steaming platters. Then he took a moment to look at all that was going on in the busy kitchen. He relished the sound of clanging pots and pans, and the fragile clatter of plates. He mostly admired the precision and efficiency of the food prep line and the work of the cooks bathed in great clouds of steam and smoke. “Wow. Real Red Lobster people hard at work. Right here in front of me. This is great.”

The officious line cook noticed that Truman was still loitering in the kitchen, and he thrust a silver ladle in his direction as an extension of a violent finger. “I thought I told you to get out of here!”

“Yes, yes. Absolutely, sir. I’ll leave right away… I love your work!” Truman called out as he made his exit from the kitchen.

The line cook gritted his teeth and wiggled his stoic black moustache defiantly. He steadied himself with two hands but quickly felt his temper getting away. “Ridiculous!” he yelled out, and he picked up and slammed a metal pot down. “I’m a professional chef and I will not put up with this bullshit! Customers in the kitchen!? I am pissed off!”

Truman noticed the raging chef in white coming in his direction just as he returned to the booth.

“Hey, you!” the cook yelled, pointing an actual angry finger at Truman. “Who do you think you are coming into my kitchen and disrupting my important work!? Huh? I don’t come to your place of employment and trespass and upset the delicate balance of your workflow.”

“Gee whiz, mister. I’m sorry,” Truman said, cowering away some. “I just wanted to talk to Maggie about something very important.”

“Now you hear this. I don’t give one shit about what you wanted. I am a professional chef. I run a professional kitchen. I will not be toyed with! You come into my kitchen again and I’ll shove a lobster straight up your ass! You got it!” The chef pinched at his moustache and gave Truman a final snarl before storming off back to the kitchen just as Maggie the waitress was coming in for a bumpy landing.

“My, my. Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays,” she said with a playful chuckle. “I got that from a movie… Now. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“It’s Sunday,” Truman informed her. “And why was that guy so mad? I didn’t mean to upset him so much.”

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Maggie said, waving a fat hand. “He’s one of those uptight fancy Frenchie chefs from gay Pair-Ree. He’s always like that.”

“Oh. I seriously thought he was going to kill me,” Truman chuckled. “Wow. Angry much?”

“No, no,” Maggie the waitress reassured him. “His bark is much worse than his bite.”

“Thanks for being so cliché, Maggie… But anyways, Maggie. I just wanted to apologize for my ill behavior during our visit here. And seeing that I may end up being your co-worker, I thought it would be a good idea to mend the fences between us.”

Maggie paused and shifted her head back in shock and surprise. “Oh. I appreciate that. I really do… But what was that about being co-workers? Um. Come again.”

“I didn’t tell you! I’ve decided to apply for employment at your wonderful establishment here. I want to work for Red Lobster!”

Maggie’s face drastically drooped like it often does when she receives unwanted news. “You want to work here?”

“Yes! Isn’t that fantastic?” Truman said.

“Oh, but. No… You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a terrible place to work. Trust me. You’ll hate it.”

“But you seem to like it here, and that cook is definitely passionate about being here. I don’t understand.”

Maggie sighed loudly and leaned in closer. “Look. The pay is low, and the management is awful, and the hours suck…”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Truman interrupted her. “This is Red Lobster and Red Lobster is bigger than any unpleasant circumstances that are surely temporary. Red Lobster is bigger than all of us. I want to do it for the pride and the prestige of it. All those other things you speak of Maggie, that’s all secondary to me.” He reached out a hand and gently touched her on the arm. “Will you bring me an application and your best pen. Let’s get this party started.”

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August

Read the previous parts of this story at cerealaftersex.com.
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (The First Instinct)

Photo by Henry & Co. on Pexels.com

Rough Ride to Juarez

I dreamt of having a collapsed lung and the doctors put me in a windowless white room and closed the door.

There was a table in the middle of the room, a white table and beside it a white chair. I did not sit down. It was cold in the room, like an air conditioner was on somewhere though I heard no sound.

One of the doctors came in with a clipboard and I told him I wanted to go to Juarez. He asked why. I told him I wanted to submerge myself in the various arts of indecency. He asked why. I thought about it, and I couldn’t tell him why. He asked why I had such demeaning goals. I told him I didn’t mean to; it was just what I thought about.

He wondered why I didn’t want to go to Mexico just to soak up the culture, go to a museum perhaps or take a bus tour. I told him I didn’t think about that. I told him I had a depraved mind sometimes. He scribbled something down on a pad, looked at me from over the top of his glasses and started walking toward the door. I asked him about my collapsed lung. He said I had worse problems than that and he’d be back in a few minutes.

When he returned, he was carrying a silver tray with a white towel draped over it. I glanced at what was in the tray and it was a needle, an injection of some sort. I asked him what that was for. He said he was going to give me a shot of morality and when I’d wake up, I wouldn’t be so damn depraved.

He had me sit in the white chair and roll up my sleeve. He rubbed a cotton ball across my upper arm and jabbed the needle right in there and pushed on the plunger without even warning me. I felt very warm at first and then very tired. I don’t remember much of anything else.

When I awoke from the dream it was very cold in the room. I fell asleep with the air conditioner on. Someone was knocking and there was a voice coming from the other side.

“Housekeeping.”

“Come back later please.”

Too damn polite Anton Chico. Why not just say: “Leave me the hell alone!”

I showered, got dressed and went down to the lobby restaurant for some breakfast. Besides an older couple on holiday and some business sophistos in suits chattering on about the meaningless, I was the only one there.

I chose a table in the corner by the window looking out on the downtown street. I ordered eggs, toast, and coffee. I sipped and ate in solitude, staring out the window. Another hot day I assumed from the way the sunlight was pouring down all around and I could see the heat shimmering off the cement. So hot. Too hot. Inhumane heat and I wondered why was it that so many people lived here? Why so many lives were compacted into such a tight, hot, and ugly space?

I decided to drive the few blocks to Mexico in my own car, park somewhere on the American side and walk over the great bridge that spanned the two nations and the Rio Grande River between them. Great river? Dirty, brown trickle. The Great Divide. The muddy vein separating grotesque wealth and desperate poverty. It made one want to puke.

It was such a hot day, and I had my windows rolled down as I meandered my way through the maze of streets winding up and around and through downtown El Paso trying very hard to follow the signs that were pointing me in the direction of Juarez.

As I got closer to the border there was construction and roadblocks and feverish masses of people walking all over the place and I could not find my way in all the confusion and the noise and the heat and decided it would be better to just go back to the hotel, park my car and take the shuttle as I had originally planned.

One should always go with first instinct. The first thought that permeates the gut and simply says: “Yes! Do it this way!” or “No. Do it another way, this is bad.”

Anton Chico in his confused mind cannot always differentiate the first instinct from the second or even the third. He often makes mistakes, takes falls, runs from his miscues, and ends up panting and raging and slamming his fists into a wall because shit just did not work out again!

Again Anton Chico. You fucked up! But Anton Chico also had a way about him that caused him to grossly exaggerate the little misfortunes in his existence into giant, earth-shattering sins with the ability to destroy his entire life to the point he is ready to jump off a balcony and call it quits for good, to trade it all in for eternal rest and prosperity. To sleep peacefully forever in the boughs of the soft trees of universal Heaven spread out in space like a sheet of stars and to never again have to speak above a whisper or for that matter even hear anyone speak above a whisper. He was not fond of chaotic noise.

And I was immersed in chaotic noise right now.

Lost and hot and horns honking and Mexican people chattering outside the storefronts as they do, the men in white sweaty t-shirts and big dirty straw hats perched upon their dark heads; the women, large and brown wearing colorful and flowery sun dresses of thin cotton waving chunky tanned arms and making deals with the shopkeepers in the big clunk of stores huddled in a dirty mass of glass and brick and stucco right on the edge of the border on the American side.

I wondered as I drove, what had I gotten myself into now, what have you done Anton Chico? You fool! You can’t drive your little car around in Mexico! They’ll shoot at it, steal it, rob you blind and maybe even rape you for the camera around your neck or the few American dollars in your wallet. Get out Anton Chico! Get out while you still have a chance!

I drove my way slowly out of the chaos and back closer to the big buildings downtown. I finally saw the El Paso Times building. I was not too far from the hotel. I would go there and find out how to get across without having to be so paranoid and stupid.

See more of the Chronicles of Anton Chico at cerealaftersex.com. Thank you for reading and supporting independent writers and publishers. Be sure to subscribe by entering your email below for updates on new posts. It’s free to follow! Thank you.

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By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.