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The Desert Therapist

I was motoring toward a town called Feldspar, out there on the edge of the nothing land, that deep, crusted sandbox of California, the dim and salty place where the heat stirs like a devil and your own loneliness is echoed. I wasn’t too sure what was going on in the belfry lately, the bells were there and gently clanging, at times misfiring, must be my neurons or electrons or the emojicons in my brain. Regardless of what the science is, I’m never the same person all the time. I am liquid. I am fluid. I break and spill. I flow and damage. Other times I am as still as an unmuddied lake beneath an azure sky, brushstrokes against a canvas of lapis lazuli. It was always difficult to uncover my own thoughts, let alone decipher them.

Driving can be therapy. There’s something soothing about driving alone in the middle of nowhere. It’s akin to survival almost, because what would happen if the car broke down and I was miles from anything. What would happen to me? I would have to survive. That’s a sort of ridiculous notion considering all the eyes on us always — the cameras, the satellites, the snipers with their cell phones. It’s not the 1800s. Someone would find me sooner or later, that is, if I wanted to be found. Sometimes, I do not. Sometimes, I think it would be better to just sink down into the Earth and never return.

As I drove, I started thinking about astral projection and dreams and wondering if they were the same thing. I had a dream last night where I was playing volleyball with balloons, and I wasn’t very good at it. My strikes were continually misguided, and the other players were down on me, so down on me that it came to the point if the ball was coming toward me, they would yell for me to just get out of the way. I quit, walked away because I was purely fed up with people being down on me. I went off to some haunted house and looked out some windows at weird people looking in at me. It was unsettling. I woke up. The sheets were crumpled. Her scent was gone. I looked to my left. Her skin was gone. She was gone. Was it forever? I remembered I had a job to do. I had a case. I was hunting a wayward husband. But maybe she deserved it. Then again, maybe no one deserves it.

And then my cell phone rang. Carola Strawberry’s name illuminated.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Smoke. It’s Carola Strawberry. How are you?”

“I’m fine. How can I help you Mrs. Strawberry?”

“Carola, please. For some reason being attached to that last name leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

“Right. So, what can I do for you?”

“My husband is planning a weekend getaway to Palm Springs. Something about golfing or whatever again, but of course I don’t believe him. The only holes he’s really planning on dropping his balls into belong to someone who is not me. I’m talking about another woman if that wasn’t clear.

“It’s very clear.”

“I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to launch your investigation. I mean, it may all be just a smokescreen, but I thought it was important to let you know.”

“Of course. Do you know what country club he was planning on casting away his vows at?”

“That’s an odd way to put it.”

“I’m a natural when it comes to putting things in an odd way.”

“He prefers the Far Wind Resort.”

“Far Wind… Got it. Anything else I need to know?”

Carola Strawberry paused on the other end. Was she shattered or would she stand up on her own? I wondered. She cleared her raspy South American throat. “I know that all this will break my heart, Mr. Smoke, and I know it’s what I want you to do, but if you could, be easy on me with the details. He was still my husband, so of course, part of me wishes it to be untrue. Does any of that make sense?”

“It makes sense. I’ll do what I need to do, Mrs. Strawberry… Carola. I’ll be in touch.”

I ended the call and grabbed the steering wheel with two hands and just hung on as the machine burrowed its way toward the sunbaked playground of the rich and the weak and the broken-souled.

As I looked out at that chalky chocolate expanse of place, I started to wonder if the world was just done with me from the very start. As one gets older, one has more to look back on. The messes start piling up. The regrets fill every vessel. The guilty things start stabbing your heart. Why do I feel so damaged? Why has the world sat on me so often? Why do dreams always die?

I don’t know why, no one answered. But what about the good things? Why don’t you ever think about the good things, John Smoke? she said. Who was she? My phantom love, that fallen angel with the open arms. Did I pass right through them?

I had to get my thoughts back upon the road. This isn’t about me right now. I turned on the radio and flew upon the miles that waited for me.

TO BE CARRIED ON

You can read the previous part of this story HERE.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
The Chick-fil-A Witch Project

The day was gray and cold, the sky the color of frozen steel and whipped cream dipped in a downward spiral of war perhaps. My hot cheeka beside me, the one I continually long to mount like an animal, suddenly got a craving for a fruit bowl, but at all places… Chick-fil-A.

We were in the big town this day, the town that has a Chick-fil-A and all the other things of consumption-fueled modern life, many in triplicate, fourplicate, fiveplicate… And so, our loving guts tell us to take advantage, to taste everything we can, when we can, however we can.

I pulled her in for a long love kiss, her lips winter warm, and then I pulled the car into the long drive-thru line, as it always is, winding, binding, crammed and cramped. Chaos. I am always amazed that this many people are so desperate for a chicken sandwich that they will sit in a line 4 miles long and waste half of their day, half of their life, waiting, for a mediocre chicken sandwich doled out by breaded bigots.

But my woman wanted a fruit bowl. And I decided I would become one of the overcrowded crowd and said, “What the hell, I’ll get a chicken sandwich. How about a spicy one?”

She looked at me with grave concern. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, with everything that happened with your guts last night.”

I thought about it. Maybe she was right. Maybe I should take it easy on the spicy food. I gave in to her wisdom and utter beauty. “All right. I’ll just have the regular chicken sandwich. What kind of crap do they put on it?” I asked my lovely because I am not always wise about such things.

“Just pickles.”

“Pickles?”

“Yes.”

“Who wants pickles on a chicken sandwich? That’s evil and wrong. Someone needs to put an end to that.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be the one to do it,” she said.

The line inched forward.

I looked past the big windows and into the dining room of this particular Chick-fil-A, and there I saw all the people stuffing their tired faces with chicken sandwiches, nuggets, and waffle fries, alternating bites between sucking sips of their big soda pops through red plastic straws. Slurp, slurp, chow chomp, chow chomp …A feeding frenzy of madness, sadness. I wondered what stupid things they were talking about. I imagined the cacophony of societal collapse contained tightly within that box. My eyes went to the front counter and the madness there as the workers desperately tried to survive the onslaught of orders and demands and complaints… “I’d punch someone in the face if I had to work in there,” I said to the steering wheel. My hot woman was looking at her phone. I put a hand between her warm thighs.

The line inched forward.

My anxiety was kicking in as we approached the young woman standing outside in the cold and holding her order machine. I always get nervous in drive-throughs because I’m afraid I won’t be able to remember everything to say or the right thing to say. And then all those people behind me breathing up my tailpipe. There’s too much pressure to order quickly and precisely.

I rolled down the window. There was no happy smile upon this Chick-fil-A worker’s face. There was no greeting of love. In fact, she was as cold as the late autumn day that encapsulated us and everyone else around.

“Name for the order,” she barked like a bitch seal stranded on an ocean rock.

I gave her my name. Had to spell it as usual so they wouldn’t jack it up: AARON.

“What would you like?”

“A regular chicken sandwich,” and I stressed, “NO pickles.”

She angrily tapped something into her computerized pad.

“What else?” she heartlessly wanted to know.

My hot babe leaned across me. I breathed in her scent as she said, “A fruit bowl.”

“Small, medium, or large?” the young lady snapped at us as if we were a complete inconvenience to her Chick-fil-A existence.

“Large?” my wife said with some confusion for she did not realize there were so many various sizes of fruit bowls.

The bitch seal punched some more stuff into her electric order pad and rattled out the total. I handed her a credit card and she bawled us out for such a faux pas. “You pay at the window!”

I pulled forward within the stream. I felt crushed, embarrassed. I didn’t understand. “Then why is she even out there with her stupid little electric pad with its card reader?” I asked my woman.

She shook her head. I wanted to be on her. I loved her madly.

As we inched around toward the window, which was a doorway, my thoughts drifted to the recent Chick-fil-A commercial I saw on the television. It was one of those commercials with deep feelings between a customer and a worker. You know, where they sit on some comfortable Chick-fil-A couch, and they relate a traumatic Chick-fil-A story and there’s tears and hugs and love and it all culminates in a stupid life-long friendship.

In this particular commercial that I was thinking about, a woman was having a hurried, frenzied day and she forgot to take the shake she had ordered when she left the restaurant. Well, have no fear lady because Lupe, or whatever her name was, is coming after you with that damn shake. In fact, Lupe is going to chase you down with that shake. Lupe is going to run two blocks to make sure you get that shake you ordered. Why? Because she has the Chick-fil-A spirit. She has Chick-fil-A soul. She has Chick-fil-A gumption. It’s because she loves you lady, she wants you to have your shake and enjoy it. She wants you to be happy and fulfilled.

As long as you’re not gay, of course. Which is weird because in the commercial there was so much giddiness and joy going on between these two women that I thought they were going to start making out.

So, I told my wife, in reference to the young lady that just took our order, “There’s no way in hell she’d run two blocks to bring us a shake if we had left one behind. No way in hell.”

“She’s no Lupe,” my babe said.

“That’s for sure. What a bunch of bullshit those commercials are,” I complained.

It was finally our turn at the doorway and the young man there politely took our payment and handed us our bag of food. “Thank you,” I said, and I pulled out into the madness of the world.

My woman undid our food bag as I drove. She spread my chicken sandwich open like sex to inspect it because she loves me and wants me to have what I want. “They put pickles on it,” she warned me.

I flipped out. “That bitch. She did it on purpose. She didn’t care about my Chick-fil-A experience at all! Why is nothing ever true!?”

My wife pulled the pickles off before handing the sandwich over to me. That’s love I tell you. She touched pickles for me. She may have even eaten one. I like pickles, but I like them where they belong. Like on a hamburger, not a chicken sandwich. Sometimes I just don’t understand this world.

“I should be in a Chick-fil-A commercial,” I said. “But instead of love vibes on the couch, I’ll be bitching about pickles.”

My wife was busy poking around in her fruit bowl. “You do that, my love,” she said as she put some strawberries in her mouth. She sure does love that fruit bowl, I thought to myself, and then we Took it to the Maxx over at T.J. Maxx. But that’s another story.

By
Aaron Echoes August
Independent writer and photographer.
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.