CEREAL AFTER SEX

The Laguna Bungle (Session 2)

At Death’s Door Again

The house was an orgiastic glory hole of shining metal and stunning stone, sharp lines, and tall windows. It had a mid-century centurion vibe to it, the slopes and angles of it crooning Albuquerque hipness in the hills. I imagined the interior to be gloomy and plush while at the same time being glittery and cold as ice in a crystal glass. I wanted to get in there. I wanted to get lost in someone else’s life — even if that life included some devious murder plot carried out to completion.

The murdering man must still be in there, but just as I completed that thought, the garage door opened like the bay of a star cruiser in vast space about to eject a fighter into the realm of another galaxy. And I saw him twaddle nervously around the car. He opened doors, looked inside, and then closed them again. I watched as he lifted the trunk, studied the inside for a moment, and then slammed it back down. He turned and looked out at the street, and I feared he had sensed my presence via telepathy or some other psychic ability. He withdrew and lit a cigarette and for a moment it seemed our eyes connected, like a hard plug into a wet socket, and some evil drenched electricity was about to flow. I was sure he would cross over at any moment, and halfway to my car he would pull out a shiny black revolver and start shooting with little to no mercy. I was ready to bail in a raucous squeal of burnt rubber and smoke. But just as I was about to ignite the ignition, he tossed the cigarette out into the street and turned away.

He then walked around the front yard a bit looking at his pristine ornamental shrubbery and rock gardens. He kneeled in the grass and plucked some weeds from one of the flower beds. The funny thing is, he was still wearing his suit, complete with the strangling, murderous necktie. Then he stayed like that for a while just staring at the dirt like he was talking to someone buried in it, like people do at the cemetery.

He eventually got up and strolled around some more before going to the trunk of a tall palm tree and there bent his neck like one of those weird birds that drinks water upside down to look up into the underside of the fronds. I’m not sure why he did that unless he was looking for coconuts or something. He then went around the side of the house and then came back lugging a black garden hose behind him. He twisted the pointy brass nozzle and started watering all the greenery like he didn’t have a care in the world.

When he was satisfied that he had gotten everything wet enough, he turned the nozzle off and returned the hose to its place at the side of the house. He went back inside the garage, glanced at his wristwatch, and got into the car there. It was a black Mercedes. He carefully backed it out. The garage door slid back down into place, and the man sped off as if he had suddenly remembered he had to be somewhere.

As soon as I was satisfied that he wasn’t returning because he had forgotten something, I got out of my car and went across the street to the house worthy of a spread in Architectural Digest. I’m really into architecture and even went to school for it until things derailed as they usually do.

I went up the curving walkway neatly lined with dew-dappled greens and flowers. I went to the wide front door of ornamental brown wood. There was a tall vertical window to the side of it, but the glass was colorfully stained so I couldn’t really see in. It didn’t depict anything about Jesus or sheep like in a church, but it was more artsy Bohemian pieces of color is all. I jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked. My hand reached for the illuminated bell switch, but I pulled it back just before pressing it in. Instead, I put my ear to the door to see if I could hear anything going on inside. It was silent and I backed away.

I’ve stood upon the threshold of death’s door more than once in my life. I’ve pressed my fingertips against it and gave it a slight push and that’s always when the light begins to leak out and try to take me over. For some reason, I’ve always been pulled back into the world of the living, or the dead. I suppose it depends on how you look at things. Some people believe life on Earth is really just hell in disguise. I can go along with that notion to a degree. All one has to do is look at the news of the day. Seems like hell to me. But then again, I’m a private detective and I’ve seen a lot of bad things. I deal with people’s problems when they can’t.

I haven’t always been a private detective, and that’s okay because I’m not really all that great at it. I’m not really great at a lot of things, and I guess I haven’t been for a long time. I’ve dimmed as I’ve grown older. But high school, now that was the time for me. I was bright back then. In fact, I was so bright my nickname at Cerritos High School was Star. Why Star? Plenty of reasons. I was a start athlete. I was a star academic. I was a star in school politics. I was a star in popularity, especially with the girls. Everyone wanted to be like me, and everyone wanted to be with me. I was the one that was supposed to go the furthest. I was the one who was to become rich and have a killer wife with great tits and live with her in a magnificent house… Just like the one I was at, right now, 26 years later. I haven’t even gone that far down the road. What the hell am I doing here? Some days I just don’t care, and so I rang the doorbell after all.

TO BE CARRIED ON

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Laguna Bungle (Session 1)

Deep-seated dreams play in my head like an 8mm film. I can hear the monotonous whir of the projector. I can see the images flash across a square white screen tacked to the wall with screaming skull nails. Her heart spills out to me in black ink calligraphy a moment before I was running through that red brick schoolyard, my rubbered feet slapping that sliver of silver walk, deep green grass all around. The bombs let go like children being dropped from a burning building to save them. Then that thunderous burst, the roll of debris, the dust, and the smoke… Blood stains for Christmas.

I was hanging out down in Laguna Beach sipping a tropical drink from a cup made of broom straw. I was wearing my green OP t-shirt, the one with blue and white waves on it, and I was trying to be California cool. I was having stomach problems and money worries and then I looked back behind me, across the asphalt artery bloated with vehicles, and up to the house made of gold and glass perched precariously on a cliff there. With all those tall windows, I thought, they must have an amazing view of the ocean as it rolls and sleeps. Then I noticed there was some person sitting out on the high veranda in a pale pink bathrobe and she — for it seemed to be a woman — was eating something. I pulled out the pair of binoculars I kept in my fanny pack and aimed them toward the veranda of the gold and glass house.

She seemed to be enjoying her fat lifestyle up there as she munched away at her toast slathered with peanut butter and plum jam. These were very good binoculars, military-grade. They came in very handy when I was fighting over in Oman. Someone came out of the house through a glass doorway with curtains that fluttered like a spinning ball gown. The man sat a drink down on a round table beside her. They spoke for a moment and the man went back inside. He must have been some sort of butler. He was tall, thin, had a pointy nose and a balding head — the slick hairs grossly combed across his scalp like tiger stripes — and he wore fancy clothes of black and Christmas red. Like I said, the binoculars were great for detailed observation.

I put the binoculars away, finished my drink and went down to the sand. I stripped off my OP t-shirt so that everyone could see my muscles. I sat there in the sand wearing only my swim trunks and a pair of cool, dark sunglasses. Some unattended kids came by and wanted to know if they could bury me in the sand.

“Shouldn’t I be dead first?” I asked in all seriousness.

They looked at each other and then one of the boys with hippie hair said, “We’ll leave your head sticking out so you can breathe.”

I agreed. “Okay. Go ahead.”

The small troop circled me, plastic beach shovels in their hands, and they feverishly began covering me up with the sand. It wasn’t long before there was a great mound of it on top of me, and like the boy had said, they left my head sticking out so I could breathe that Southern California air – that unique blend of saltwater and pollution.

They looked down at me and laughed. There were two boys and three girls. Someone called for one of them from a distance. “Over here!” one of the girls yelled out, and I saw an arm wave through the air. “We got to go,” she said, and then she snatched the sunglasses off my face, and they all ran away giggling.

“Hey!” I yelled out. “Bring those back. Do you want my eyes to burn out!”

I wriggled in the sand and eventually extracted myself from the grainy mound. I stood up and tried to brush what remained away. I shielded my eyes with a hand and scanned the beach for the little heathen that ran off with my sunglasses. And that’s when I saw the woman, hauling the girl along behind her by the hand, approach me holding out my Oliver Peoples. She handed them to me. “Sorry about that,” she said with a glossy tanned smile. “She can be a little brat sometimes.” And she gave her a forceful tug.

I looked down at the girl struggling to pull away from her mother. “It’s okay, but yeah, these are pretty expensive. Thanks for returning them… I was about to call the cops.”

She twisted her face and gave me a funny look. “Really? You would have called the cops on a kid?”

“She broke the law. It’s called theft.”

She looked me up and down like I was the most horrible person in the world. “Asshole.” She turned and clumsily stomped off through the sand, the squirming girl in tow.

I went back up to the wicker bar because I wanted to get wasted. I don’t know why I wanted to get wasted, I just did. I took a small table off by itself with a good view and the waiter brought me a bunch of Long Island iced teas. I got out my binoculars and aimed up at the gold and glass house again. The woman in the pink bathrobe was now standing against the rail smoking a cigarette. She was dreamily looking out at the ocean. I just kept on watching her to see what mundane thing she would do next, and it was probably a good thing I did.

The next thing that happened was kind of crazy because some man, not the butler, came storming out of the house and he was clutching a striped necktie in two tightly clenched hands, and he came up behind the woman with little to no hesitation and put the necktie around her throat and started pulling on it. The woman dropped her cigarette and sort of stumbled back against him. I could tell she was really struggling because she was desperately trying to claw at his forceful grip and it looked like she was choking, and her mouth was open, and her tongue was hanging out like a dog’s would in the hot summer sun.

I suddenly stood up. I bumped the table and my drink spilled. One of the waiters rushed over with a white towel and began to mop up my mess. I handed him the binoculars. “Take a look at this,” I said.

He looked through the binoculars. “What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asked.

“That woman over there on the veranda. She’s being strangled,” I told him.

“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Are you just being creepy?”

I snatched them back from him and looked myself. There the woman was, still being strangled. Her arms were now desperately waving in the air and I’m sure she was trying to scream. Her eyes looked straight at me, and I saw her lips form the word help. Then she went down.

I kept watching. The man was panting and wiping at his face with his hand like he was worried and upset. I saw him frantically look around. He must have been checking to see if anyone had witnessed what he had just done. He paced around the veranda trying to calm himself. He combed at his wild Al Pacino hair with his fingertips and he seemed to be arguing with himself. He stopped moving and straightened his clothes as he stood over her. Then he took the tie that he had used to strangle the woman with and put it around his own neck. He carefully knotted it, pulled it, and straightened it as if he were looking in the mirror while getting dressed for work. He glanced around one more time. Then he reached down, grabbed the woman by the arms, and dragged her into the house.

“Damn man. Some guy just killed that woman,” I said to the waiter who was still standing there with me.

He just shook his head and handed me my bill. “You’ve had too much to drink, mister. I’d advise that you just get yourself on home.” Then he walked off mumbling something to himself.

“It’s nice to know you don’t care about people getting murdered around here!” I yelled out after him. Then I threw some money on the table, re-checked my pockets to make sure I had all my stuff, and went to the street where I had my car parked.

I got into my little midnight blue convertible and started it up. I revved the engine a bit because I wanted to be cool. I checked myself in the rear-view mirror and then I checked for traffic in my side mirror. I stomped on the gas pedal and pulled out in front of someone just for fun. They laid on their horn and I flipped them off.

The traffic was just too much. Why do we live like this? I wondered. I took the first left that went up into the hills. I searched for the gold and glass house, and it wasn’t too hard to find. I pulled to the curb on the other side of the street, shut down my ride, and just waited. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but that’s what I did.

TO BE CARRIED ON

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Coffeehouse Crapshoot

It was an autumnal Sunday full of color, her favorite being the peachy orange as it stood out as the brightest and boldest among the others. I glanced over at the woman in the passenger seat and my heart jumped and my stomach made a longing roll within itself. I knew I was in love and would be forever with this one. I was living in sort of a dreamland at that moment.

We had just come from sculpting our bodies and filling the auto with petrol. We were in the mood for a good coffee and some brunch. And since Halloween was edging closer by the day, we decided to go to one of our favorite haunts, that place downtown where the mists of our ghostly memories cling to the air like cream on pumpkin pie. The Coffeehouse.

The Coffeehouse sat on a popular corner in the downtown sector of our town and was one of the few places open on Sunday seeing that many of the townsfolk flocked to the booming bell towers to chant and sing to great stained-glass Bog in the sky, their voices like bleached licorice streams frothing and flowing forth from their hypocritical holy gullets and spilling out into the world like sirens in the sky.

Parking came easy, which it never did during the week, and we walked hand in hand down the crisp concrete, staggering behind some old lady in a red coat puffing away on a white cigarette. We caught a whiff of the cloud she spoke of, and memories of wild younger days danced in my head as my lady friend battened down the sweet hatches of her body – for she has battles between the air and her own lungs.

We entered the establishment and there was a small crowd inside quietly murmuring among themselves and we made our way to the front counter and to where they had the large rectangular menu board set off to one side. Our eyes strolled along the boardwalk of selections and my lady friend went straight for the London Fog, some kind of tea mash up that I don’t really clearly understand, but it gives her great joy as it slips across her lips and down into her glorious guts.

I usually would opt for a Cuban coffee, but on this autumnal Sunday inside The Coffeehouse, I wanted to try something different and went for the elderberry tea because I wanted a jolt of something that would rev up my immune system or whatever the hell it does. I also wanted the waffle with whipped cream and sliced banana. My lady went with the waffle as well, but with fresh berries and whipped cream. I was feeling a bit randy after all that talk of whipped cream, and I pulled her close to me and whispered something about uncontrollable hot love and madness.

The clerkie at the counter was a confused, nervous type – probably a newbie that wouldn’t last – and she kept asking the barista beside her questions about this and questions about that, and then as she was clumsily punching our order into the machine there, she would look up at us with a pained expression and tell us, “We’re out of that, we’re out of that, too. We don’t have that. I’m sorry we don’t have any of that either.” They had a piece of paper there with a list of things they were out of that the girl kept referring to. It was a long list. My lady friend wanted to look at it, but they kept it guarded like some great royal secret.

They didn’t have either of the teas needed for our chosen beverages. They didn’t have what they needed for our backups, as well. I wondered if they even had water. With frustrations growing, my lady and I settled on Plan C – drinks we didn’t really want because it was all that remained. The sadness in her eyes made me want to smash a spooky pumpkin right then and there, but then again, I would have probably been busted up myself by the bobbies for causing a radical disturbance on the Day of the Lord.

Grief-stricken by the news of the Coffeehouse’s diminished supply, we took our number to a small table for two and sat down. A short while later, the same girl who had taken our order at the counter strolled over, a haunted house type of fear smeared across her face, and she informed us, “I’m sorry, we’re out of waffles… But we have pancakes.”

My lady friend, who is often much bolder than I, quickly snapped back with, “This is ridiculous. How can you have pancakes, but not waffles? Can we just get a refund.”

My nerves were tingling throughout my body as we made our way back up to the counter to engage in whatever process would be necessary to get our refund. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I figured it would be some horribly complicated thing that they couldn’t figure out and it would take half the day. But then, the humbled and meek clerkie girl came through the crowd with a palmful of cash and some coin. She handed it to me and apologized again. After that, we walked out.

I took my lady by the hand, and we strolled along the walk, my insides grumbling with anger. My lady friend, however, is quick to resolve disappointment in life by looking at the brighter side of… Everything. She has a gift for staying positive in an increasingly negative world. I was ready to smash things, and she was more than willing to just move on to a greater destination and not let our let down weigh us down. She’s angelic like that, and I often believe that is the reason the universe gifted her to me. She’s always what I need when I need it. She always has been – from the very beginning of us to the very breath I take now. I only hope I can return that gift tenfold.

We crossed over the street to the other side and found a little patio bar type kind of place we had never been to and were happy to see they were still serving brunch. We sat outside and we had the sugar waffles with syrup, fruit, and bacon. We were tucked up against each other on a bench at a metal table as we ate and drank. The weather was perfect. The sky was a pure, unmuddied blue. The air was kindly littered with gold and green and orange. And in the end, things turned out better than I expected. We were in a passing moment of life, and we were in it together, and that’s perfect imperfection.

By
Aaron Echoes August
A Tussle with a Tassel

I had a dream in the opening creaks of dawn today that I was getting ready to graduate from high school again. In my dream, the colors of my cap and gown were white trimmed in gold. In my real-life graduation, the colors were green and gold… I think. I don’t really remember because it was eons ago. I had attended a Catholic high school my last three years because I had been a bad kid in regular school and kind of got kicked out. I guess it wasn’t because I was bad really, I was just maladjusted. I didn’t fit in. But truth be told, Catholic high school was rougher than regular high school. That’s just what I needed.

The point is, because it was a Catholic high school and a relatively small class of less than 100 people, we had our graduation ceremony at a godly chapel on the campus of one of the local colleges. It was some sort of long-standing tradition. I suppose I didn’t really care about that. I hated high school and was just so ready to get it over and done with.

Moving on, I guess it was only fitting that my final act as a high school student turned out to be an exercise in my own misplacement in the world. After I accepted my diploma and began to stroll across the chancel, I reached up and struggled to find the tassel that I was supposed to move from right to left. It never occurred to me that performing such a seemingly simple act would have turned out to be my penultimate high school kick in the crotch. I was mostly concerned with the damn cap completely falling off my head and then everyone would see my messed-up hair.

Like I said, I had reached up and I was feeling for it, but I just couldn’t find the damn thing. I could sense the breathlessness in the gathered crowd. I was immediately struck with panic and what I really wanted to do was just run, run, run and never return to society ever again. But that would have been impossible. Everyone was watching, everyone was waiting. And then, as I took nearly my last step at the come down point off of the chancel, I found that damn tassel and flipped it to the left. It had slipped to the very back of the cap somehow. I was relieved. The crowd was relieved. The saints and demons etched into the colorful stained glass of the chapel were relieved. The whole damn universe was relieved.

That was my graduation. While everyone else was happy, excited, and celebrating the coming joys of their surely bright futures as they gathered on the perfectly manicured lawn outside after it was all done, I had had a tussle with a tassel. That is my memory. That is the little burn scar from my 18th year of life that for some reason really sticks out to me. It shouldn’t though, because over the years I have collected many more missteps and scars – much thicker and deeper ones. Such is life, I suppose.

I would think that for many people, high school was the highlight of their lives. For many people, I believe, high school memories are pleasant ones filled with friends, good times, laughter, dances, football games, parties, trips, dating, etc… Not for me. I was never involved in anything because I just knew I would have made a fool of myself, and those bastards would have jumped on that opportunity and torn me to shreds. And you may think I’m a psycho, but I actually burned my high school yearbook in our downstairs fireplace at the brutal Colorado house in the foothills where I lived. I just kneeled before that hearth of red brick like a monk and watched it flame up, curl, and finally turn black and tumble to ash. I don’t know why I even had a yearbook. My parents must have gotten it for me because it surely wasn’t something I would have chosen to have on my own.

Anyways, enough of that. I think this post was supposed to be about a dream… Yes. The dream.

In the dream this morning, I was getting ready for my graduation, and I was terribly anxious because I just knew, knew, my cap was going to fall off and I’d be made fun of… Again. So, in this dream, I was madly scurrying about in some cabinets searching for hairpins. I needed hairpins because I wanted to have them with me in case I needed to pin my cap to my head to keep it from falling off – which is really stupid because I never had hair thick enough to pull something like that off.

I was searching and scrounging and scavenging for hairpins, and in the process, I was making a huge mess of everything because I was just tossing stuff everywhere, like in a cartoon. My mother was in the dream, and I recall she looked really worried about me as I was just flipping things about in search of hairpins. It was as if she already knew I was going to have a very rough life and there was nothing she could do about it. She knew she had bred a cuckoo. That’s the look she had. The dream ended when I finished shoving everything else back into the cabinet and it was such a disheveled mess in there and that bothered me and I hated leaving it like that, but I did. I just closed the cabinet and then I woke up.

Fast forward umpteen years and at this moment my beautiful wife is gathering the laundry and clanking dishes. I’m madly typing away at my desk. I just finished my coffee and Greek yogurt sprinkled with granola and soon I will down my daily dose of prescription medication and head off to the gym. I didn’t need high school for this. What a painful waste. I just needed a chance to be what I wanted to be. I never fit into that small rectangular box that I sternly looked out from in that burning yearbook. I never will properly fit – not like they want me to.

Aaron Echoes August
Refrigerated Dreams (Act 8)

There were two reasons why Adam Longo still went to school. The first and foremost being that he knew that’s where Veronica Genesis would be. Secondly, is because he still got hungry and needed food to fuel his ever-evolving young body as he made his way through whatever phantom dreamland had swallowed him up.

It was high noon and the cafeteria at Grainer Falls Junior High School smelled like a gruesome menagerie of what some would call food. He walked among the fray of jabbering, obnoxious, and constantly twitching fools — those animals in human skin and clothes, his schoolmates. He carried a blue plastic tray with two hands. It had divided compartments. One had a hamburger. Another had a small pile of crinkle-cut fries. Another had a red apple with a bruise. Another still had a small carton of chocolate milk. He moved slowly, his eyes darting from side to side as the crowd watched and taunted him. Why all this? he wondered to himself. Why is this place such an inhumane zoo? He just wanted to eat his lunch like everyone else. But then again, he could never be just like everyone else. That had been his ultimate struggle for what seems to be going on… Forever.

“Hey dipshit!” someone yelled, and then Adam was hit in the side of the face with a warm, buttered dinner roll. It bounced off him like a ball and the entire place roared with laughter. He wiped away the oily butter that stained his face and just kept on moving, his eyes now focused on what was in front of him. Veronica was sitting at a long table near the back with a bunch of other girls and they were chittering away like maniacal young birds on a wire.

When she looked up to see what all the commotion was about, she saw him coming toward her like some artificially sweetened, tortured monster, and when she saw what all the others were doing to him, how they were teasing him, abusing him in that horrible socially acceptable school way, her young heart ached. She stood up and yelled out to him. “Hey Adam! Come sit over here!”

He tasted her voice as it bulldozed its way through everything else and came across the air to him. He started moving faster toward his place of acceptance. But he didn’t notice that Rude Rudy had purposely stuck his big foot out into the walkway and Adam tripped and fell forward and his lunch tray spilled all over the floor along with himself. It was typical school bully hijinks and again the lunchroom filled with taunting laughter.

“Woops!” Rude Rusty said to him as Adam got to his knees. “Looks like the poor baby hasn’t learned how to walk yet,” he teased. Adam turned to look up at him and he felt as if he could have spat a plume of scorching fire right then and there to burn his stupid freckled face off.

But that’s when Veronica came over and she stood up for him while he was down. “Leave him alone!” she snapped at Rudy. She went to help Adam back up to his feet. When he was standing again, their eyes locked but just a moment and then Adam looked around the room and he saw that nearly everyone was pointing and laughing and calling him names and more food was being hurled in his direction and that’s when the sounds suddenly became muffled, and time seemed to slow. He felt the thud of a bruised heart against the walls of his chest and in his now clogged up head. He caught a glimpse of some teachers pouring in and trying to calm the madness. Then he ran. He ran as fast as he could, and he burst through the opened doorways of the lunchroom and out into a glossy hallway where he almost slipped and fell. He regained his traction and made his escape to the sunlight.

“You asshole!” Veronica screamed at Rude Rudy, and then she took off after Adam.

“That’s right,” Rudy yelled back as she went. “Go be with your pussy new boyfriend!” He looked around at all his grinning admirers now gently slapping on him with opened palms and congratulating him for being such an amazing jerk, and Rudy soaked it in, and he smiled and laughed with them and then encouraged them to be even more vicious than he was. “If you ever see that damn kid again… Make sure to let him know he’s not welcome here!”

“We will!” the crowd of lambs yelled out in unison as small fists shot up in the air.

That’s when Rudy climbed on top of one of the long cafeteria tables and they all cheered when he raised his fat arms dotted with orange speckles and rallied them. “New kid sucks!” he yelled out as he pumped his fists. “New kid sucks! New kid sucks!”

And that’s when they picked it up and they followed along with his chant and the entire place was taken over by a melodic roar of “New kid sucks! New kid sucks! New kid sucks!”

They started pounding on the tables in rhythm with their chant — Boom, boom, boom… “New kid sucks!” Boom, boom, boom… “New kid sucks!”

Rude Rudy looked down upon his faithful throng and he reveled in the admiration, and he reveled in the power he had, and he reveled in the fact that he could somehow control the masses if he was just ugly and hateful enough.

Then there came the annoying shrill of numerous gym class whistles and a couple of large hands reached up through the frenzied mist and pulled Rudy down from his lunchroom pedestal and dragged him off to somewhere else to have his behavior formally corrected.

MORE TO FOLLOW

By
Aaron Echoes August

You can read the previous part of this story HERE.