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The Misty-Eyed Stormtrooper (Episode III)

Photo by Marcel Fiedler on Pexels.com

The Life Stopper Challenge

Karl the stormtrooper carefully balanced the board on which rested his hazelnut 12-grain bread as he made his way through a hypnotic corridor at Outpost 9 on the planet Placitas in the galaxy of Fresh.

When he arrived at the quarters of Commander Altiar, he nervously pressed the call button and waited.

“Yes, what is it?” came the voice of the commander from the other side of somewhere.

“It’s Karl, sir. The stormtrooper. I’ve come with the bread you requested.”

The door quickly slid open with a swoosh, and Karl stepped inside. The commander’s quarters were opulent compared to the simple, crowded barracks that the young stormtrooper was accustomed to. He looked around at the elaborate furnishings, the decorated walls, the large windows looking out upon the rutty, desert-like landscape of the planet Placitas and all the dots of light in the night sky that roared above it. The commander was out of uniform and was wearing a shiny robe of red and black that went down to his shins. His feet were bare, and it all struck Karl as very odd for he had never seen a commanding officer in a robe and with bare feet before. Those two worlds rarely mixed, if ever.

The commander took notice of the young stormtrooper’s obvious discomfort and chuckled. “You don’t believe that I’m always in uniform, do you Karl? I do take time to unwind and relax. I have to shower and change clothes like everyone else. Please, come in. You can set your bread down over here. I’ll grab a knife.”

Karl set the bread board down as ordered and waited. The commander returned with a large, silver bread knife with a glinting, gently serrated edge. He waved it around recklessly as he spoke. “I must tell you, Karl. I’ve really been looking forward to this. I know it may seem strange to you that I’m so excited about bread, but sometimes being a commander in the Evil Empire doesn’t allow a proper balance between work and a personal life. I’m afraid having hobbies and other interests outside my official duties are often frowned upon by the higher ups, so it’s nice to be able to indulge when one can… Now, let’ see what we have here.” The commander diligently looked the loaf over. “The color is good,” he said. He picked it up and rapped a knuckle against the bottom. A hollow sound would indicate to him that it had been baked long enough. “Seems done,” he said with a pleased smile.

Karl nervously looked on as the commander worked the knife into the center of the loaf with a precise sawing motion. Once cut through, the commander picked up one half and studied the interior. “Hmm, looks like you have a good dough structure, it’s not over or under proofed so the rise is nearly perfect.” He flipped the half loaf around to look at the underside again. “No soggy bottom here.” He poked at the inside with a finger and was happy with the spring back. He looked up at Karl and smiled. “That’s an excellent bake. You really nailed it. But let’s hope it tastes just as good as it looks.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

The commander kept his eyes on Karl as he tore a piece from the loaf and put it into his mouth. He chewed slowly. Then he closed his eyes and bowed his head like he was saying a prayer as he continued chewing and thinking deeply. That worried Karl. A sick nervousness began to rise in his guts, and he thought that at any moment the commander was going to spit the bread out of his mouth and order Karl to be executed. When the commander opened his eyes and looked at him, Karl feared the worst.

“That’s fantastic,” the commander said. “I love the flavor you’ve achieved. It holds in the mouth superbly. It’s got an amazing chew. Absolutely fantastic.”

Karl released a great sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.”

“I mean it. Well done. That’s an excellent loaf of bread. You should be proud of yourself,” and Commander Altiar reached out his hand to congratulate the stormtrooper with a firm grip and shake. “Congratulations, you blew my balls off as requested.”

“Wonderful. I’m glad my bread blew your balls off, sir. I was really worried you were going to hate it.”

Commander Altiar beamed at him. “Take some advice, Karl. Don’t ever reveal your doubts when you’re up against a challenge. It only robs you of confidence.” The commander slapped his hands together to clear away any breadcrumbs. “Now, I suppose you’re eager to get on with your life. As I am a man of my word, I’m relieving you of your duty to the Evil Empire. I of course will handle all the authoritative nuances that are bound to creep up. But I would be quick to say your goodbyes and leave this place and be off to France.”

Karl’s head drooped for a moment.

“Is there a problem, Karl?” the commander wanted to know. “I thought you would be ecstatic.”

“Of course, sir. I am, sir. It’s just that…”

“What is it?”

“Well, I’ve never been much of a traveler, and I don’t have too many connections… Anywhere. I’m not sure where to begin.”

“You begin at the beginning, Karl. I’m sure you’ll do what needs to be done to reach your destination,” the commander instructed. “I wish you the best of luck.” The commander proceeded to cut another slice of the bread. He raised it to his face and inhaled the aroma. “I think I’ll make some toast. Would you care for a slice, Karl?”

“No. That’s okay. I should probably just get back to the barracks and get my things together. Thanks for all of this, sir. I greatly appreciate it.”

The commander studied him for a moment and sensed the unfinished business that sat upon the air. “You act as if there is something else on your mind, Karl. What is it?”

“Sir?”

“Yes. Go ahead. Just say it.”

“Would you come with me?”

The commander froze and only his eyes moved, and they moved all over Karl trying to decipher his deepest intentions. The young stormtrooper was suddenly worried that his request was far too bold and that he just destroyed his only chance of ever getting away from the Evil Empire and fulfilling his dream to just bake.

“Did you just ask your commanding officer to run away with you?” Commander Altiar said in a somewhat bitter tone.

Karl stammered. “Sir. Yes, I did, sir. It’s just that you have a far greater knowledge of space travel, and I was hoping you could perhaps act as a guide. I know you have your own ship. You must be a good pilot. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I just wanted to ask anyways. My apologies if I overstepped my bounds. I’ll be on my way. Thank you, sir.”

Karl turned and made his way toward the exit.

“Wait,” Commander Altiar said.

Karl turned and looked at him. “Sir?”

“I suddenly find myself at that familiar crossroad of regret, Karl. I don’t know if it’s just the high I’m feeling from this delectable bread, but something tells me that I should say ‘yes.’”

Karl stepped forward. “I’m only asking for passage. Once on Earth I won’t be a burden to you any longer. I swear it. But I would be eternally grateful for your help.”

“All right, Karl. That sounds fair enough to me. But I will only do this on one condition.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“That you bake me some more bread.”

Keep an eye out for Episode IV

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
Mingling With the Savages

A companion piece to Inclined Corners of a Yellow Map and Bite of the Oven Salesman.

The Long Drive

I handed the cop my driver’s license: Soledad Smith, 1704 E. El Toro Boulevard, El Fuego, NM. Date of Birth – 7/19/77. Hair – Brwn. Eyes – Hzl. Weight – 165. Height – 5′ 9″. Corrective lenses – None... Former oven salesman in Omaha.

“You were swerving.”

“Huh?”

“You were swerving Mr. Smith. Have you been drinking tonight Mr. Smith?”

I looked out the windshield at the great expanse of stars draped across the black sky and I wanted to be drifting in space like a lost robot.

“No. I haven’t been drinking. I’m just very tired. Long day of life, you know.”

Liar …

“Where are you coming from?”

“Santa Fe.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Shopping and mingling with the savages. After I dropped off a friend at the airport. The Sunport in Q-town. You know it? I’m just trying to get home and sleep.”

“Q-town?”

“Albuquerque.”

“I thought you were in Santa Fe?”

“I was… After Albuquerque. It’s hip and super fresh.”

He looked at me like I was some sort of a loon. “Mr. Smith,” he said in a very authoritative tone, “You’re not making much sense and I really don’t feel like arresting you tonight. I just want to finish my shift, go home, and fuck my wife. I suggest you stop at the next motel and get some sleep before you get yourself killed out here. There’s one up ahead in Encino… ‘bout 20 miles I’d say. Not the nicest place in the world, but it’s got beds.”

“I know it… Know of it.”

He handed my license back and I tucked it inside my wallet and looked straight ahead.

He started to walk away back to his patrol car, and I stuck my head out the window into the black veil of night.

“Sir?”

I heard his boots come to a dead stop.

“Did you see that wreck back there?”

“What wreck?”

“Isn’t that where you were coming from? The bad wreck some miles back.”

He stood tall and looked back down the road stretched out behind us.

“There ‘aint been no wreck on this road tonight. Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve been up and down this road all night. Haven’t seen anything. Get some sleep, sir.”

I watched him climb into his patrol car and he drove off.

I started my car, rolled up the window and turned on the cd player. Loud music rolled out of the speakers as I pulled out onto the highway and headed to the motel in Encino.

My room at The Cactus Motel smelled of mold and old cigarette burns. I splashed cold water on my face and looked into the bathroom mirror. The grime and worry on my skin rolled away with the beads of wet and dropped down into the pool of dirty water in the sink. Stopped up. Of course. I grabbed a drab towel and dried my face. Took a deep breath and laid down on the uneven mattress of the bed. It felt dirty. A semi roared by on the road outside. Someone was having sex in the room next to mine. I could hear the woman moan “oh yeah, oh yeah” through the thin wall, could feel the headboard rhythmically knocking against it. It was late. Well after midnight and I felt very panicked and out of it. I tried to close my eyes, but all I kept seeing were visions of the weeping girl walking around the wreck in shock. “There hasn’t been a wreck on this road tonight…”

The words of the cop echoed in my head. Had he been lying? But why? Could I have been so tired that I did imagine the whole thing? Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. I was safe. I was so tired. I had to get some sleep to get up early enough to drive the rest of the way and make it into work by 4 p.m.

Morning came quickly. I rolled out of the bed sore and still sleepy. I got dressed and went to the motel office to check out. My car looked dusty and road weary in the sparkling sun of morning. A tarantula aimlessly strolled by one of the tires. I got in, started the engine, and sped off. Encino dissipated in a flash, and I was once again going 65mph headed south. Another 125 miles to go before I reached El Fuego. It was already getting hot. I rolled down the windows and cranked the volume on the stereo. Oasis – Definitely Maybe – Track 3 – Live Forever. If only we could. But then again, why would we?

The parched, rocky landscape flew by me like a desolate nightmare. The sky so gaping wide, churning blue and cream. The sun muscling its burning power through the stratosphere and into my eyes. Past the sad town of Vaughn I rolled and onto the remaining 95 miles of pure nothingness. Flatness. Openness. Scorched skin on the rocks and dust. Rocky red lands exposing burnt flesh. Stillness. Isolation. Wind and silence and heat. It was the desert. Endless miles of god’s gaping wound upon the Earth. I could see the highway roll on in front of me forever; an asphalt ribbon cooking in the first rays of day. A seemingly endless needle piercing the horizon, and all around it flat and gore and a dry stew of dirt and rocks and cactus. An unending mirage maybe; perhaps if I pulled the curtain aside a bit, I would find Eden on the other side. A paradise of lush, green and magnificent waterfalls tumbling over wet rocks down into the deepest pools of midnight blue. But there was no curtain. There was no mirage. This was the real deal. The great American Southwest in all its desolate glory and me a simple corpuscle pumping my life through the corroded veins of overcooked sanity.

I turned the stereo down to zero just so I could hear the hot wind rip through my car, wrestle my thinning locks and breathe life into my scorched lungs. I pushed the cigarette lighter in and waited for it to pop. I pressed it to the tip of my ninth cigarette of the day and exhaled a ghostly cloud of venomous smoke. I coughed. I always cough after the first drag. I turned the stereo back up just to drown out the din of nothingness and kept driving, my eyes fixed on the heat waves on the horizon.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (Love and Loss)

The Battles

All the battles of Anton Chico’s life have brought me to this place – alone. For the battles break you at times. There. Over those hills I look out at the far gone on the horizon, now bathing in the holy amber light of another fading day.

So many miles between myself and life. Anton Chico looks out over the edge of the balcony at the long way down. So far to fall. But look how far I have fallen already. The hum of the city winding down mixes with the din of my own loneliness as I watch a happy family trot along the sidewalk gazing at the sun and moon both etching out their individual spaces along the horizon.

Together, husband and wife and little kids too, all on their way to get gunned down in Juarez because they are the entitled Americans who know no better and think Mexico is just another shopping mall, another place to push a shopping cart, another place to bitch at inept clerks who don’t cater to their every spoiled whim.

Get gunned down you fools. Have your white American blood all over the filthy streets of Juarez in your endless endeavor for more stuff. Get gunned down as you piss and whine because no one speaks English, and the Burger King hamburgers don’t taste the same across the border. Shooosh the little begging boy away. Cringe at the sight of him why don’t you, at the site of his dirty face and dirty hair and big, wet weepy eyes and turn in disgust as the filthy rags he calls clothes make your eyes sting just from the smell of them. Get gunned down. It’s all for you but there’s no one there to save you now.

Anton Chico, me, that is I, turned off the television set and headed down to the car to round up some magic at a local magic shop. The car had cooled down considerably and when I got in it reeked of bar life. I headed for the main drag that runs up and down by UTEP (University of Texas El Paso). The street was surprisingly hilly and lined with appealing architecture unfamiliar to me. Mexican-American brick and stucco facades, adobe churches, wire and mesh fencing, stone yards, cacti, stunted little palm trees and yuccas.

This part of the town had a sad tone to it, it breathed poverty and desperation, yet it had a furious taste of survival to it – cultures clashed, the old and the new, the white and the brown, the intelligent and the inaudible. As I moved farther from the areas closer to downtown and nearer to suburbia, the familiar sickness of strip malls and neon rose and that is where I found the spirit shop, pulled into the parking lot and sat there for a while smoking a cigarette in the last rays of day.

When I went inside the Asian clerk behind the counter greeted me and watched me as I headed straight for the beer coolers at the back of the store. I looked up and down at all the varieties he had stocked there. I wanted something good, not the American piss swill I usually bought because it was cheap, I wanted something with some heart to it, something with some kick, something that would really slur my speech when I began talking to the television set back at the hotel… Something that might give me the crazed sense of false courage to throw myself off that balcony and crash face-first into someone’s nice, clean windshield. I wanted something that might kill me.

I left my cell phone on just in case someone called. Was something starting up? Not really. It was there, but not. There was a party and I was invited but of course I didn’t go because I was here, there, in El Paso getting lit on magic firewater and tossing burning cigarettes over the edge of the balcony. It was dark. The lights in the room were dimly lit and I began to tilt. It was sad there, yet jubilant.

No one in the entire world knew where I was and for insanity purposes, I truly believed that no one cared. I was Anton Chico the unloved, the ungraceful, the unbeauty of all males in the Southwest. But someone was hurt that I did not come to the party. I don’t know why. Said she was hoping I would, but most likely in the throes of the festivities I rarely came to anyone’s mind.

I went out on the balcony for some air. It tasted brown and smelled dirty, but I felt free as I cracked open that new bottle and added to my demon inebriation.

Once sufficiently aired out I commenced the ritualistic clicking of the remote control. There was nothing worth watching. There is never anything worth watching but I left it on just so I could hear some voices other than the ones in my own head. I was watching something about crocodiles and a man who drove around in a little boat at night with a flashlight and then he dove into the water and grabbed onto one of those crocodiles and wrestled with it. He had an Australian accent. Them fucking crazy Aussies. Anton Chico thinks there great, just great.

Another bite of magic please and I suddenly felt very, very lonely. No one had called. No love letters slipped in under the door. No angels from heaven dangling outside my doorstep. Nothing. Solid me. Lonely me. Empty me pouring out the emptiness into a world of emptiness and I wondered if everyone else was as bored stiff as I was.

How could they be? I hear them laughing, I see them smiling, I see them hanging all over each other doing great things and going great places and there was me, Anton Chico, lit up and down on the seventh floor of some dirty old downtown El Paso motel boo-hooing about another and another and another crushing loss while the entire freaking world is out there partying their asses off.

Click.

The TV is off. Muffled voices on the other side of the walls. The clinking of glasses. Laughing. The sound of faint music, a tap of a piano key, a lover’s whorish growl, a train whistle, my own rapid heartbeat banging to get out of my chest. A freight train leaving town, its call and grind a heartless calliope.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.

Check out the previous posts in the Anton Chico series: Low and High and The Monarch of Devils.
Inclined Corners of a Yellow Map

This is a companion piece to Bite of the Oven Salesman.

Cigarettes For a Saint

Once I was west and with the oven selling in Omaha behind me, I set a half-empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes on the stone feet of St. Francis outside the great cathedral in Santa Fe as a sort of offering. It was dark save for the spotlights beaming down from heaven.

I felt strangely safe in the shadow of the church and the tall trees that surrounded it. The tolling of the soothing bells sent shivers up and down my skeleton. I sat on the courtyard wall and looked out at all the rummagers of history, drunks, confused tourists and well-to-do sophistos sparkling around the town square like ice rink skaters high on New Mexico gas and good credit.

I had spent most of the day in the old city, a sort of day trip to quell my very own madness. Just the night before in El Fuego, my new town in the southeast quadrant of NM, I went to bed in a manic stupor and full of brat meat and beans and German potato salad on a pretend Halloween night that brought no spirits to the surface, no goblins to the door other than my own tar-caked demons living in this rattling, oily rib cage. I scared my own self with my innate ability to fall prey so easily to bad habits. Easily. So easily. Frighteningly easily. Addiction to addiction. Lack of self-control. Bent on self-destruction no matter what. A bomb. A nuclear bomb. Love bombed the will to live right out of me. My heart was Hiroshima all over again.

The Nightmare in Clines Corner

It’s a little stop where I-40 and Highway 285 meet up in the great expanse of nothing but wide-open wonder. There were a couple of gas stations, a gift shop, a restaurant, stray dogs, diesel trucks and the dreamy distant sound of traffic zipping by on the interstate. West to Albuquerque. East to Tucumcari. And me in between, slumped over in my ride, head spinning and stomach lurching. I was trying to sleep a bit before pushing on to the more than 100 miles I had yet to go. It was late. After midnight I suppose. Traffic was pulling taffy wide with ghost groans. Zooooom … rumble, rumble rumble … zooooom. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get comfortable. The giant Shell sign perched up high on a tall metal pole was too big and bright. A yellow and red beacon to travelers of the night; my menace at that moment and more.

“Go to sleep why don’t you,” I thought out loud. A big diesel truck rolled into the gas station noisily. I had to get out and walk around. The air was cool enough at night still and maybe a stretch and some air could get me coherent again.

I unfolded myself from the car and walked around the lot a bit. Everything was so bright and stinging my eyes. My head was still pounding. Some juice, I needed some juice. Gatorade, lemonade, first aid. I pulled the door to the convenience store open wide and stepped inside. Quiet but for the buzz of the yellowish lights. A cricket in the corner was making love to the silence as I yanked open the cooler door and fumbled around for some juice. Apple juice is good. Took it to the counter and cleared my throat. The clerkie was rummaging around in the back somewhere, counting cigarettes or playing the French horn. I don’t know. He came out to the counter and mumbled something like, “Izz thut ell for ugh?”

Yes. That is all you greasy bastard. That is all. I have to get moving. Lots of driving to do. Too much empty space to pierce through like a dart with angel wings sailing for the sunken promised land – El Fuego. It will be hot tomorrow. It will be too hot. It is always too hot in El Fuego.

The Desolate Crash

I managed to get the car back onto the road and in motion again. I crossed over I-40 and into the darkness of the less traveled 285. It wasn’t long before I came upon some sort of clamor in the roadway. I slowed down as I came upon the wreck. It was three or four cars; I couldn’t really tell in the twisted dark. Three or four cars wrapped around each other like lovers in an orgy of metal and hissing steam. It was silent mostly, except for the soft groans of people trapped and the tears of a teenage girl pacing back and forth in obvious shock and awe. I rolled down my window. She moved her mouth away from her cell phone; she was shaking.

“Are you all right?”

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” she answered.

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Yes… We’re all hurt. I think someone might be dead.”

I looked past her at the wreckage. Surely someone was dead.

“I can give you a ride somewhere.”

“No. The police. The police are coming already. I called them.”

I looked off ahead of me into the dark distance and could see the tiny pops of blue and red drawing closer. But where did they come from? They weren’t coming from the interstate. There’s nothing else out here. This is a wasteland.

“I’ll stay with you until they come. You can come sit in my car if you like,” I said to the trembling girl. But she didn’t hear me, didn’t notice me. She was crying harder and shaking more violently, mumbling to herself and dragging her feet across the roadway as she walked in tortured circles near the wreckage. I looked off into the distance. The blues and reds were growing larger. I could hear the faint sound of sirens. I put my car in gear and drove away, watching the scene of despair and pain fade away in my rear-view mirror.

The cops blew by me with such speed it nearly forced my car off the road. If they didn’t slow down, I thought, they would bash right into the whole wreck scene and cause even more misery. I watched their lights disappear over a hill. They were gone, I was gone, and the darkness swallowed me whole as I rumbled on.

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Chronicles of Anton Chico (The Monarch of Devils)

Off to El Paso

I went to El Paso. It was some summer of love and it was hotter than Georgia asphalt in July. But this wasn’t Georgia, it was Texas.

I was afraid my little old Nissan would overheat in the middle of nowhere, but it did not. It made the trip faithfully. Four hours without any air conditioning through the wastelands of New Mexico into the barren yellow corner of Texas right on the border with the country of Mexico. The stark, dry landscape all around me. Mounds of rock dying of thirst and choking on their own dust. The radio crackled in and out as I dodged the vultures and ran over the tarantulas ambling across the roadway. I could hear their splattered guts sizzle on the broiling pavement as I left them behind to die.

I was being swallowed whole by the vastness of the place. The ever-widening expanse of desolation laid down before me and it was as if I was on some mad magic carpet ride through the outlands of the earth. Was this even earth? It all seemed so sci-fi and foreign to me. Not very many other cars and when they did pass it was with a sudden swooooosh of lightning-quick eye contact with some foreigner on their way to holiday farther north in the mountains where it was at least 20 degrees cooler. The sunglasses, the smiles, the slicked-up lips mouthing nonsense to other travelers.

I exhaled smoke and tossed another butt out the window, watched it skid along the roadway in my rear-view mirror, shooting sparks like a firecracker all over the hot asphalt like a crashed motorcycle. I took it slow, didn’t want to push the engine too hard. If she were to break down out here, I would be fucked for sure. She kept on pushing on.

The little gray sedan I bought from a foreigner who went back home. That foreign lesbian chick who used to come sit by my desk and talk incessantly about Norwegian folklore while I was trying to focus. She was intelligent, bright, and witty as I struggled to work and think of enchanting things to say all at the same time. That foreign girl with the endless legs. It was as if all she had were legs. She was so damn tall, unnaturally tall, like a volleyball player from Belarus, and she was constantly ducking to avoid hitting her head on things. She smelled like gingerbread and books. That foreign girl was on the other side of the planet now. I dropped an empty beer can out the window, hearing it go tink tink behind me, and stopped thinking of the foreign girl.

I drove and drove and drove through the beautiful atmosphere thinking that perhaps I had made a wrong turn for I saw no sign of El Paso, no smog cloud, no hazy shapes of buildings on the horizon. Nothing. Nothing at all. From the direction I was coming I was unaware at the time that the city of El Paso lurches up suddenly like an oasis erection in the desert. One minute you are gazing around looking for it and then there it suddenly appears laid out like a hi-tech graph, sprawled across the land like a breathing, pulsing organism teeming with frantic, hot life.

El Paso City Limits – Pop. 563,662

The freeway suddenly sucked me in, and I found I had to drive faster just to keep up with these speeding maniacs. The freeway, like the digestive tract of a human body, wound in and out, up and down, over and through the chaotic town like a maddening bowl of spaghetti in motion. It was metal on metal, brick on brick, breath to breath and pillar to pillar.

I came into the downtown district and saw a cluster of tall buildings all huddled together and basking in the burning rays of the sun. I saw the 11-story hotel I was looking for and skillfully pulled onto the exit and down into the belly of town. I turned into the parking lot and killed the engine, letting the car pant and sweat in stationary safety. I crawled out. My clothes were wet and stuck to my body. I grabbed my bag and went inside. It was a decent place decked out in an unauthentic Mexican motif. I heard the chattering of Spanish speaking tourists and hotel workers all around me. The scent of Mexican food wafted throughout the lobby as I made my way to the front desk.

“My name is Anton Chico and I’d like a room with a view for two nights please.”

The clerk had me fill out a little white card with a pencil the size of my pinky.

“Suite?”

“A suite would be nice.”

“Smoking?”

“Yes.”

She tapped in my information into a computer and ran my credit card.

Should I be concerned?

She smiled and handed me a small envelope containing my key card.

“704 sir. Enjoy your stay.”

“If I want to go over to Juarez, will someone take me there?” I asked her.

“Yes, we have a shuttle. Just let us know when you’d like to go over sir. Our driver is very flexible.”

And then I took a momentary dream pill.

“Why do you wash and stow the ashtray, Anton Chico? You know you’re just going to fucking light up again,” I remember saying to myself as I shuffled around my little hut on Galapagos looking for cigarettes that were not there. That’s why I went to Galapagos in the first place. To just sit with the dragons and not smoke. I went crazy sitting there with those dragons. Those damn things could have killed me, but I didn’t care; I was out of my mind with nicotine fits, and hell, I thought dying would be better. Just one vicious bite from those raw-hided bastards and I’d ooze away on the beach. Slumped over like a cadaver who floated in from the sea. Some poor Joe who just got dumped from the deck of a ship because he had typhoid or hepatitis or something bad like that.

So, I just sat there in the sun and sand with the dragons wandering about all around me until some sweaty American scientist studying the place came along and offered me a fat Marlboro, tightly packed and ready to burn. I took it, inhaled deeply, and left the dragons be and went to my hut to jot down some thoughts in a notebook. I think I called it Anton Chico’s Short-lived Island Adventure.

And so there I was in this El Paso hotel room standing out on the balcony leaning far over the rail with a burning cigarette planted firmly in my mouth looking way down at the cement of the parking lot spotted with dirty oil stains. I spit. The spit plummeted down, slid sideways in the wind, and then crashed into the windshield of a black BMW sports car. How easily entertained Anton Chico was then and there. How easily driven to the easily obtained excesses of life.

I looked out at the world around me, slowly running my eyes over the whole of the scene. Right across the busy street below was a large blue building with large, dark windows reflecting the fading sun. Over to my right, stood square and squat office buildings reflecting the shimmering gold of the sun as well and a shabby looking old hotel taller than the one I was in with a big red sign on top that said: HOTEL.

I could see the drip marks from the air conditioners running down the sallow sides of the building. And beyond that, beyond the heart of downtown El Paso splattered over the barren, dusty hills were the shacks of Juarez. The oppressed lived there with their green cards. They were the ones who spilled across the border every day to clean up after all the American filth had taken their great big shits for the day. They worked the work that the too proud Americans were too proud to take. The hotel room cleaners, the janitors, the battering rams, the shit sweepers, the spit lickers, the gut rapists. They did it all for a few dollars just to pour another cup of tortilla soup down the gullets of their brain-damaged children swatting away the flies back home in their beautiful green, tin shacks shimmering in the desolate sun.

Although the stories are loosely connected, you can check out the previous post here: The Chronicles of Anton Chico (Low and High)

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Misty-Eyed Stormtrooper (Episode II)

The Unexpected Meeting

When things had quieted down and most of the other stormtroopers were settling into the barracks for the night, Karl retrieved his secret cookbook from its hiding place and snuck off to the communal kitchen to bake bread.

He rummaged through the cabinets to gather bowls and utensils and pans and all the ingredients he needed to make a hazelnut 12-grain bread. He joyfully busied himself in the quiet of the kitchen and he thought to himself how much better it was to be baking bread than blasting shit.

While he gave the dough time to rise, he sat down at one of the tables and retrieved his personal communication device. He searched for information on Paris and all the different patisseries there. He got lost in the pictures and the descriptions and he studied maps and he tried to remember the names of streets and the different arrondissements, or districts.

He fell so deep into a delightful trance of study and inspiration, that Karl the stormtrooper didn’t realize someone else had come into the communal kitchen. Suddenly there was someone menacing standing above him and looking down.

“What are you doing in here?” the intimidating figure asked with a hint of evil in his voice.

Karl suddenly shot up from his chair and stood at attention. “Commander Altiar. Sir. My apologies, I didn’t notice you had come in.”

Commander Altiar was dressed in a stiff gray uniform, and he wore black gloves and shiny black boots and his hair, the color of the planet Tatooine, was perfectly combed and lightly oiled against his head to ensure not a single strand would fall out of place. He slowly walked around the young stormtrooper and looked him up and down judgmentally. “I asked you what you are doing in here? It’s past curfew. Why aren’t you in your bunk?”

“Sir, I’m sorry sir. I’m baking bread and I’m afraid I lost track of time.”

Commander Altiar stood toe-to-toe with Karl and scowled menacingly into his eyes. “Did you say you’re baking bread?”

“That’s correct sir. Bread.”

Commander Altiar nodded as if he was overly suspicious of the young stormtrooper’s story. He walked around the kitchen looking over all the things Karl had laid out on the counter. The commander ran a black leather finger through a scattering of flour. He studied it intently for a moment, and then asked, “What kind of bread are you making?”

Karl cleared his throat. “Sir. Hazelnut 12-grain bread.”

Commander Altiar returned to where Karl was standing and got in his face again. “And what exactly do you plan on doing with this hazelnut 12-grain bread?”

“I plan on eating it, sir,” Karl nervously answered.

“You know,” the commander began, and he looked at the number tattooed on Karl’s neck like a black ink branding, “No. 14788. I’m also quite fond of bread.”

“You are, sir?”

“You seem surprised by that, No. 14788.”

“I didn’t realize commanders enjoyed bread, sir.”

Commander Altiar chuckled softly and looked young Karl the stormtrooper in the eyes again with great sincerity. He even smiled a bit. “Have you ever been to Mamiche on the Rue Condorcet?”

“Sir?”

“It’s a wonderful little shop in Paris, France. On Earth. They have the best damn bread in the universe. Have you ever been there?”

Karl felt a tingling sensation rise within him. He couldn’t believe what the commander was asking him. “No, sir. But I would love to. It’s one of the biggest dreams in my life.”

The commander moved his head back in attempt to further survey what the young stormtrooper exactly meant by that. “Are you not satisfied as a soldier in the Evil Empire, No. 14788?”

“Permission to speak freely, sir.” Karl announced.

The commander took a seat at the table, folded his hands as if about to pray and looked up at Karl. “By all means, No. 14788. I’d love to hear what you have to say.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m not a complete tyrant lacking passion for things in life. Go on. Speak to me about it.”

Karl sat down at the table with him. “I don’t believe I’m cut out for a life as a stormtrooper, sir. It’s just not me,” he began. “What I really want to do is bake bread and make pastries. I’ve done a lot of research and I know the city of Paris, on Earth, is the best place to be if I were to truly make my dreams come to fruition. I guess what I’m saying is, if I had an opportunity to not be a stormtrooper and I could travel to Earth to learn about making bread and pastries, just like they do on the Great Intergalactic Baking Show… I believe I would be very happy.”

The commander nodded his head silently for a moment. “And what if I told you, No. 14788…”

“You can call me Karl, sir.”

“All right then, Karl. What if I told you I could turn your dream into a reality.”

“Sir!? What? How? Why?”

“Calm down, soldier. I can see your passion is genuine, but I want you to prove it to me.”

“Absolutely, sir. How?”

The commander nodded toward the area of the kitchen where the ovens were. “I want you to bake me the best damn hazelnut 12-grain bread you ever made in your life. I want you to bring it to my quarters for me to taste it. I want you to utterly overwhelm me with your understanding of rise, flavor, and structure. I want a perfect bake, Karl. I want you to blow my balls off with this loaf of bread… And if you do, I will excuse you from your duty to the Evil Empire and allow you to leave this place, forever. What you do after that is entirely up to you.”

“Sir? I, I can’t believe it. Are you serious? You would do that for me?”

The commander got up from the table and adjusted his gloves for a moment. “I know that you and the other men talk shit about me behind my back, Karl. I’m not an ignorant man. I know you all consider me to be this growling, unfeeling brute of a commanding officer, and that’s fine. I expect that in my position, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a soul or a heart underneath it all.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I was a young stormtrooper once, just like you. And I had dreams as well, other dreams, dreams that didn’t include…” And he looked around the room at something invisible. “Didn’t include being on the side of evil. I, like yourself, Karl, had a passion for baking. I wanted to follow your exact dream. But I didn’t. I didn’t take the risk, Karl. And now I’m just an ill-fitted officer hated by the men serving beneath him. I regret that every single day. I don’t want that to happen to you, Karl. I don’t want you to have this same sickness of regret. It’s what a good leader should do for a soldier with real spirit, Karl. So, what I’m saying is, don’t disappoint me with a bad bake… And no soggy bottom. Carry on, soldier.”

Karl clicked himself to respectable attention and watched as Commander Altiar walked out of the communal kitchen with a swoosh. Karl felt himself all over to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. “I can’t believe this,” he whispered to himself. And then he smiled, and his guts roared with a feeling of ecstasy, and he jumped up and down like an excited child and cried out loudly, “Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m going to be a baker! I’m going to be a real baker!”

And then reality suddenly hit him, and he remembered what the commander had said: “I want you to bake me the best damn hazelnut 12-grain bread you ever made in your life… I want you to blow my balls off with this loaf of bread.”

Karl suddenly sunk down in his own self-doubt. “But what if it’s not the best damn hazelnut 12-grain bread I ever made in my life? What if I don’t blow his balls off? What if I just mess it up? I’ll be resigned to a life of just blasting shit.” He sighed. But then he brightened with determination, he slapped himself in the face, pulled himself together, he reiterated his dream in his head and heart. “Come on, Karl! You can do this!” he encouraged himself. “You’re a good baker, you’re an excellent baker, and you’re going to go far… Farther than you have ever been in your whole damn life.”

By
Aaron Echoes August

Keep an eye out for Episode III. You may read the previous part of this story here: The Misty-Eyed Stormtrooper (Episode I)
Have you heard of a line?

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

I don’t know what it is, but every time I go out in the world lately my patience with human beings is further tested and frazzled. It seems like decency, kindness, and just plain ol’ consideration for others has completely gone out of style. Rudeness and selfishness seem to be trending upward. To hate on others is the honorable thing to do these days, so it seems to me. It sickens and saddens me. I’m trying to find the light through the fog, but it’s really hard to see at times. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place??

The unfortunate inspiration for this post is the two recent trips I made to the infamous pharmacy in our town, the one that starts with a red W and rhymes with… Ruptured spleens. The pharmacy counter is always understaffed and there’s usually a line of customers all the way back to the pissers near the shampoo aisle on the other side of the store. It’s an agonizing experience, and one must be prepared to sacrifice a significant amount of time in their day just to pick up a few prescriptions.

On my first outing, I was waiting in line and was moving closer to the front every 17 minutes or so. When I was in about the second spot in the queue, a woman with two little kids – she was the grandma because one of the little girls, maybe about 5, was crying and pouting because grandma wouldn’t let her have something or another and the little girl kept saying “I’m going to tell my mom that you were mean to me.” The grandma just scoffed, said, “Go ahead and tell your momma I’m mean to you,” and then threatened to spank her.

Anyways, the mean grandma stepped in front of everybody and wriggled her big ass straight to the counter to fuss about her appointment for whatever kind of vaccination she was getting. I hope it was a vaccination against being an inconsiderate jackass. I made a what the hell gesture with my hands and turned to look at everyone behind me. All the faces there mirrored my frustration and anger.

Um, hello? There’s a line here, lady. Do you not see it or are you that much of an inconsiderate person, as well as being a mean grandma?

Not 5 minutes later, another woman comes up and goes straight to the counter in complete disregard for the ever-growing line of people that surely must have been visible to her. But she was blind to it, nonetheless. Ugh, I was so mad at that point I wanted to scream and throw diabetic supplies around. (That’s what was on the shelf beside me). And as I did just a minute ago, I wanted to yell out, “There’s a line here lady!” And the fact that the lone clerk at the counter said nothing to these people made it even worse. How about some “You’ll have to go to the back of the line, Karen.”

Why are you catering to these jerks!? I know it’s not the counter clerk’s fault for there not being enough help, I’m sure they’re just as frustrated, too. It’s the damn corporate gods who do everything in their power to get the most for the least. It’s called good business sense or something like that. It’s profit over people is what it is, and there’s nothing good about that.

And in my return trip today, it happened again. I was second in queue, (somehow, I am always second in queue when these things happen), and this woman comes sneaking in from the side. I watch her as she’s eyeing the line, then eyeing the counter. She’s going back and forth, back and forth, like Pong blips, measuring up the odds of whether or not she’ll get bawled out by anyone if she makes her move.

The guy in front of me, who resembled Frankenstein by the way, counter-blocked this woman and stepped forward. She was probably scared of him. I was next up to face the challenge, and when Frankenstein completed his transaction, I looked straight ahead and moved before the woman could sneak in. I could tell in my peripheral vision that she was looking at me with these sad, accusing eyes like that was going to make me just let her cut in. Because somehow, she was in the right. It’s like those idiot drivers who don’t know how to work a 4-way stop and start going out of turn. But despite her wondering scowl, I stayed strong and kept moving forward and when I got to the counter, I felt good for standing up for what was right.

My transaction was quick, and I was off straightaway. I didn’t make any eye contact with the sneaky lady, so I don’t know if she made her move after me. I just made for the store exit, got into my car and drove home.

I don’t know why, but I actually started feeling a little bit bad about not letting the woman cut in front of me. But then I was telling myself, “No. Why should I feel bad?” I’m done with people preying on my weaknesses and taking advantage of me. I’m done with being too soft. It was unfair for her to try and slip in before me and everyone else. I didn’t play the nice guy for once. I stood up for my place in line. I stood up against injustice, just like one of the Super Friends. So, yeah, there’s no reason I should feel bad. None at all. If anything, she should feel bad. But I’m sure she doesn’t because if she were that kind of person, she would have gone to the back of the line in the first place.

But I just don’t understand what gives these people the idea that it is perfectly okay to do this? As the title of this article states: Have you not heard of a line? I just don’t get why some people think they are so much more important than others, why their time is more valuable. How can you be so selfish and oblivious? How can you settle into your bed and soul at night without choking on your own awfulness??

I just don’t get it. I don’t. My brain isn’t wired to be like that. I can’t compute what makes these people comfortable with being crappy. And when I was driving home, I was really overcome with this feeling of not belonging in this world or even wanting to belong in this world. We seem to be drifting toward this communal mindset that is so off base, so twisted around, so humanly wrong. This tragic communal mindset is breeding all these false beliefs to the point that up is down, and right is wrong, and evil is good. I see people worshipping sinners while stepping on saints. Hate is good. Greed is good. Being a racist is good. Stealing is good. Cheating is good. Lying is good. Treason is good, etc… Where’s it going to end?

It’s going to end with the end of us all. That’s where.

By
Aaron Echoes August

For more of my ranting on the human condition, check out the latest episode of my The Laguna Bungle sessions. It’s a fictional story about an emotional private detective that stumbles upon a new case involving an unfaithful husband and more.

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The Laguna Bungle (Session 4)

The Nomadic Mind

I’m not sure if the woman in the pink bathrobe had just hired me to kill her husband, but it sure felt that way. And if that was the case of the case, she was getting it for a bargain. But there was no way in hell I was killing her cheating husband for 1,000 clams. I’m not in the business to kill, and I never have been, and maybe never will be. But I suppose I should let it be known that if I had to kill someone, I would. If it came right down to it? Absolutely. I pack a Walther PPK because it’s a messy world out there and sometimes you have to protect yourself, stand up for yourself no matter what, even if that means plugging a guy, or girl, who are ready and all too willing to plug you. That’s how I feel about it. You can’t just let the world cross the line and have its way with you whenever it wants.

My thoughts drift like the sands of the Sahara. My mind is nomadic, and so here I go and go again.

I always find it strange that people are born into this world completely innocent and then they get folded into it with a prodding paddle of good and evil, and it makes them hard as stone, bad-hearted or sad or full of pain for some reason or another. I don’t get why we allow that, as a society, as so-called human beings. Why do we take this simple, fresh from the womb innocence and brand it with the burning hurt of this planet just to make more hurt. Right now, it seems the whole world is so damn backward that people are digging the pain, they’re digging the hurt, they’re digging the hate. The prayer warriors out there are cheering for demons. The leaders are ripe for gleefully tossing bombs. Their goals are suffering and destruction. I just don’t get it. Sometimes I just want off this watery marble. I want to be like Captain Kirk and transport myself somewhere else, somewhere else I can breathe.

Some people would argue and say that none of us are born innocent. They say we’re all born with sin already in us and the only way to get past that is to take a dip in a baptismal bath at the church, like the one of my youthful days, the one on Erie Avenue in my hometown by the sea in a place called Ohio. Well, it wasn’t really a sea, it was a lake. A big lake. A big, cold lake. But it looked like some magical, mystical far-off sea to me. Like the Caspian or something like that.

That’s where they dipped me in, the holy water font in the church, not in the lake, although that may have been better, more real, a far more shocking electrocution of the nerves, an authentic awakening of the newly born spirit. That house of the universal god blessed my throat and listened to my sins, too. And now I’m no better than most coming out on the other end of that long ago gig. Now I carry a gun and my nerves are shot. I get lonely, too, but then sometimes loneliness tastes good and I revel in it. There’s something about loneliness that drives a man’s creativity as well as wanton self-destruction. All my ex-girlfriends think I’m crazy. That’s why they’re exes. Maybe I am crazy, but you sort of have to be in this world and with what I do. I’m okay with my shader pale of madness as I like to call it. It’s like loneliness that you just can’t hold in anymore.

Church. What a bizarre place. So ornate, so golden, so solemnly colorful as the people look up and worship some invisible being or idea. I always liked the smell of the incense burning away in the swinging thurible, always in perfect rhythm to the indecipherable chant of the white-robed holy one directing the show. That exotic scent of the incense mingled with the worshippers, their perfume and the aftershave and the afterglow of rapid morning sex of sinful lovers in heat. I close my eyes and just listen and breathe it all in.

As I drove north on the 1, the PCH, I looked to my left and saw the ocean spread out like a big ruffled blue blanket. To my right it was clusters of buildings, rectangular plug-ins with windows and porches and verandas and parking lots and yards, all of the works of the inhabitants carved into the orange and green and asphalt gray and ancient white and yellow adobe, everyone gathered for a game of real life right there at the edge of the teetering coast.

Everyone is living on top of each other here. I live on top of others in a place called Huntington Beach. It’s crowded. My apartment is small, but it works. It has big windows at least, but the rent kills. It’s hard to find a place to park. I don’t have a bedroom because it’s a studio, so the rumpled bed is in the main living space. So is the refrigerator because the kitchen is too small. I don’t have a stove, only a two-burner hotplate. I eat out a lot which is fine because there are so many restaurants pressing in on me, just like everything else. It all presses in, there’s no room, it’s jam packed here. Every space flows into the next. There are no borders here.

But I can walk to the beach, and looking out at the endless ocean gives me a sense of release, and relief. I’m on the third floor and I have a small balcony so I can sit outside and drink coffee or read a book and look out upon the hive of madmen. I can listen to all my neighbors screw each other, too. No one is ever quiet about it. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a dirty movie but I’m always the guy on the sidelines just watching and sweating, craning my neck trying to focus in on the penetration and I’m just puzzled as to how they get themselves in such positions. I can also hear the punches crushing faces and the screams and the cops knocking on doors.

Did I mention that the air all around me smells like the ocean and exhaust. It’s weird, but I kind of like it. It first hits you out around Indio when you come in from the east. It smells different than anywhere else I’ve ever been — this carnivorous California. These endless rows of mad life.

The woman in the pink bathrobe who hired me to throw surveillance on her cheating husband has a strange name. Carola Strawberry. That’s what she told me and that’s how I got her saved in my phone now. Carola Strawberry. Before I left her house, I made fun of her name because she made fun of mine — John Smoke. She thought it was made up, so I told her I thought her name was made up. Then she told me her husband’s name and I just about lost it — Garola Strawberry. “Granola?” I asked her.

She repeated it, slower so that I could understand her because she had a strange accent, like something out of South America. I got my money and told her I’d follow up in a couple of days after she emailed me some more info and logistics. I was heading home to get cleaned up before I headed out to the desert for a night or two just to get crazy lonely and moon high and wild like a wanderer. I needed time to think about everything. I needed time to consider my future in this world.

TO BE CARRIED ON

By
Aaron Echoes August
Episodes of the Ephemeral Green Ego

I went to the library to do some research on what it means when one loses one’s marbles. I can imagine my mind as a cluster of marbles – the colors being emerald green, earth blue, cherry red, tiger orange, a hazy gray, a ghost white, a mauve mouth, a yellow memory in stone, aluminum silver, gaseous pink, lonely brown, Sand People taupe, leprechaun rainbow gold – and they were clustered there like I said, in a chalk circle and the shooter was cocked and knocked and rolled like circular glass and the marbles scattered like the thoughts in my own head.

Crack, palooey, brainwaves wobbling, dreams unremembered, love at times cumbersome, love at times more delicious than any life anyone ever had, palooey, the marbles move like a spiral galaxy, arms spitting glass balls, eyes tumble and roll, the pupils all gyroscope and nonsense like buttery grape jelly in a spaceship.

I unhinged my laptop, set up my mouse, plugged in my earbuds so that I could listen to third eye activation music. It helps me think and glow and be bulbous in thought. I started going through websites about marbles and psychiatry because my own psychiatrist told me it would be helpful to do my own research on my own condition. He called it something like getting in touch with my inner self. What the hell does he know about my inner thoughts? Everything, I suppose.

I reached into the pocket of my light navy-blue jacket and retrieved my pack of Russian red Camel cigarettes. I didn’t even think about being in the library and so I just put it in my mouth and lit it and started smoking. It didn’t take long for the young skinny hippie guy at the circulation desk to come over and start yelling at me – but in a quiet way because we were in the library – and he said to me, “Sir, there’s no smoking in the library. You have to take that outside immediately.”

I looked at him and then I looked at my Russian red Camel, the tip glowing and a swirl of grayish white smoke coming off of it like a genie coming out of a bottle. “Oh,” I replied. “I guess I didn’t realize what I was doing. Habit, you know.”

“Yes. A bad habit at that. And I must ask you again to please take it outside.”

“But I just sat down and got my computer all set up… Can you watch my stuff then?”

“I can watch your stuff, but please make it quick.”

I was sitting on an uncomfortable, stodgy couch in the office of my psychiatrist, Dr. Infinity. I always told him I thought his name was made up because he was hiding something from a past life.

“No,” he would tell me. “It’s not made up. It’s my real name.” Then he’d point to all his framed degrees that hung on the wall that had his full name printed on them in black calligraphy: Dennis M. Infinity.

“What’s the M stand for?” I asked him once.

“Mikael,” he answered.

So, Dr. Dennis Mikael Infinity sat across from me with his notepad and sharpened pencil and he wanted to know how I had been.

“I had a really strange dream that has me concerned.”

“Why are you concerned about this particular dream?”

I hesitated to tell him because he had a bad habit of being overly judgmental. “I dreamt about the Jolly Green Giant.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his expensive IKEA chair. “The Jolly Green Giant?”

“You know, the giant green guy who makes vegetables.”

“I don’t think he actually makes the vegetables. I believe he just oversees the process. Nature makes the vegetables. Life makes the vegetables.”

“Okay, Doc. Whatever you say… But in this dream, I was watching him from a short distance, and he was walking among the cornfields and the squash vines and the bean poles and the rows of peas and beets and carrots…”

“I get the picture. You don’t have to mention every vegetable known to man.”

“Well, he stopped walking and was just standing there looking across the land with pride and he had his hands on his green hips and then all of a sudden his underwear fell down.”

“Underwear? I don’t think the Jolly Green Giant wears underwear… It’s a leafy tunic as I recall.”

“Well, in my dream he was wearing underwear.”

“Was it green underwear?”

“Yes. Everything about him is green. Can I finish telling you about my dream now?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“Like I was saying, his underwear just fell down and then he started…”

Dr. Dennis M. Infinity leaned forward with growing interest in my story. “Started what?”

“He started making pee on all the vegetables.”

“Making pee?”

“He was peeing on all the veggies!”

“That’s disgusting,” the doctor said, and he made a notation on his pad with his pencil. “Are you sure he was really peeing?”

“Yes. He was peeing all right. And he wasn’t even holding his big green thingy in his hand. He was just letting it go on its own, and he was laughing about it, like it really made him happy to be peeing on all those vegetables.”

My psychiatrist removed his glasses and pinched at his eyes like I was causing him great distress.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“You’re dream. It’s very strange. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“It has to mean something.”

“Have you recently had any bad experiences with vegetables?”

I glanced up at the ceiling and thought about it. “No. Nothing comes to mind.”

He looked at his watch and happily sighed. “My, my. We’re already out of time. Thank goodness.”

“But what about my dream?”

“Let me think on it for a while and we can talk about it more next week.”

“All right then. Bye,” I said, and I got up and walked out of his office feeling like the biggest tool in the world.

Dr. Dennis Mikael Infinity sat at a round Formica table in the fancy, clean breakroom at the office where he worked with all the other mental specialists. He pulled a sandwich out of a brown paper bag, unwrapped it from its wax paper and bit into it. He washed it down with some Coke in a red and white can.

One of his colleagues, a bastard named Brett Walker came into the breakroom and joined him at the table. He set down a white foam comtainer and eagerly opened it. Dr. Infinity craned his neck to see what he had to eat. It was Chinese food. Vegetable lo mein. “Looks like I have a better lunch than you,” Dr. Walker teased.

“Vegetables,” Dr. Infinity mumbled.

“What’s that about vegetables?”

“Oh, my last patient was telling me about the most bizarre dream he had. It involved vegetables.”

“Oh really? Was this patient a woman? Did it involve a cucumber?” the other doctor chuckled oddly.

“No, no, no. Why does everything have to be sexual with you?” Dr. Infinity protested.

“What can I say. I’m a very sexual guy. Do you know how many women I’ve slept with in the past week?”

“No. And I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve!? Bullshit.”

“It’s true,” Dr. Brett Walker boasted, and he took a big steaming bite of his veggie lo mein, and then suddenly made a face as if he was extremely grossed out.

Dr. Infinity took notice. “What’s wrong?”

These vegetables taste funny. Like nasty funny. Ugh.” Dr. Walker tossed down his white plastic fork and closed the lid of the food container.

“You’re not going to eat it?” Dr. Infinity asked.

“No way. It tastes like…”

“Jolly Green Giant urine?” Dr. Infinity curiously probed.

“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

Dr. Infinity sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Nothing… But would you mind if I took your container of food?”

Dr. Brett Walker looked at him like he was really weird, stood up, and pushed the lo mein in his direction. “Be my guest. But why?”

“Research,” he replied.

“Whatever Infinity. Hope it doesn’t kill you.” Dr. Walker scooted away from the table, stood, walked to the door and went out.

The psychiatrist opened the lid to the lo mein and peered inside. It didn’t look bad, he thought. He sniffed at it. It didn’t smell that bad, maybe a little off. Dr. Infinity looked around the breakroom to make sure he was truly alone. Then he reached in with a hand and scooped up a big sloppy plop of the lo mein and shoved it in his mouth like a starving caveman from the Paleolithic Age. He chewed slowly, swallowed, and then repeated the actions until the entire container was empty and licked clean.

The doctor drained his can of Coke, got up from the table, disposed of his lunch trash, and went back to his office. He sat there at his desk in the dim quiet and looked out his big window at the world. Far off in the distance, beyond the streets and the buildings, past the highways and the dams, nestled up against purple mountains were great farm fields of golden green, and that is where he saw him, the Jolly Green Giant watering the world with revenge for what the unnatural made him.

END

By
Aaron Echoes August