Steel Brandenburg III moved through his overpriced apartment in Berlin, Wyoming like an Isosceles tornado. Veronica Eyes was leaving Mango’s Tangle and getting ever closer. It didn’t take long to get anywhere in the realm of Berlin, Wyoming.
His place was a mess because he rarely had guests. He found a chunk of cheese hidden within the trunks of fibers of the living room carpet. He had no idea how it got there. But it was hiding like a little fuzzy Dr. Seuss character. He picked it up, opened the front door, and tossed it out into the park-like courtyard. He thought he heard a tiny scream as it sailed through the crisp, night air.
Steel’s thoughts then turned to Veronica. He wondered if she would be worked up and wet when she arrived. He wondered; would she finally be willing? He went to the doorway of his bedroom and glanced at the messy bed. It’s been six years since he has shared a bed with anyone. He’s gone six years without even a kiss or a hand to hold. He went to tidy up the bed, fluff the pillows. He worried if he was clean enough. What if she wanted to go down on him. Would she suddenly jerk her head away because he was gross? But there was no time to shower. He worried about all that. Steel was always worried about something. Wyoming was a good place to worry about things. Being in the hollow echo of Wyoming made it easier because one was usually cold and alone.
Steel looked out a window just as a set of headlights came bouncing into the night light parking lot. He watched and waited. The door opened. She slid out and looked up. Steel moved away from the window quickly and went toward the front door. He was overly eager and pulled it open just as she was coming up the stairs.
“Hey,” he said. His nervousness was vaguely apparent.
Veronica handed him a paper bag. “I brought more beer.”
“Oh, how sweet of you,” Steel said, and he quickly regretted his choice of words… “How sweet of you?”
She had taken notice and gave him a look. “Okay,” she smirked as she moved past him. He breathed her in, and she had the scent of night rain and spray paint, cue chalk and throbbing womanhood. She was so cool and collected, he thought. She handled life like it was meant to be handled. How did she do it? Did she ever shed a tear? he asked himself. She was so out of his realm of existence. It was like he was Mercury and she was Pluto.
They sat on his couch. There was a good bit of space between them. They drank more beer until they both had reignited their buzz. Steel fell into the look of her face as she talked. Her eyes were like some explosive spinning star in space. Her skin was smooth. Her dark hair flowed from her head haphazardly. She twisted her mouth in endless expressive shapes. Her smile was clean and wet. Steel wanted to reach out and touch her. When would he ever have such a perfect shot at it? Here she was, in his home getting drunk. She seemed happy. She was smiling and laughing as they talked about work and life in a nonsensical way. And of course, she was the one that suggested she come over.
“Why don’t you move a little closer,” he finally said. “I feel as if there is this great chasm between us. I’m not Evel Knievel you know.”
“Huh? You’re weird.” She laughed and scrunched her face. “Are you going to try and kiss me or something?”
His longing for her tumbled like a gymnast on crack. “Would that be a problem?”
“Women don’t want men to ask… Just do it.”
Steel moved closer. He put his hand at the back of her head and pulled her in. The thrust of her tongue came quickly. He was surprised by that but took all of it he could. She moaned. She clamped her hands to his face and pushed him down onto the couch and crawled on top of him. Her hair fell upon him like soft rain as she continued to forcefully mash her face to his. Steel wrapped his arms around her average frame and held her close. The warm weight of her against him felt like all of astrology coming true. She suddenly sat back up and worked her top off. Her bra was purple. He wanted to burn funeral incense and he didn’t know why. He suddenly felt religious as her flesh became spiritual in his hands.
“Where’s your bedroom?” she breathed. Her mouth glistened in the soft light of a dime-store table lamp with a tilted, yellowed shade.
Steel motioned with his head of quaking diamonds and dust. She took him by the hand and led him that way. Halfway there and with heat in the air, there came the sound of someone yelling from outside, down in the parking lot. Yelling through a megaphone. Steel’s first thought was that it was the police. Veronica was trying to frame him for rape, he worried. His heart pounded as he rushed to the living room window and moved aside the curtain. His murmur was puzzlement. “What the hell?”
Carrie Gould from the newspaper was standing in the middle of the parking lot barking butchered poetry and love psalms through the device she held to her mouth. “I forgive you, Steel Brandenburg. I forgive you because I know you are more than the bad words that come out of your mouth. I know you are more than a dirty trick or a prank. I forgive you because I love you!”
“Ah fuck,” Steel moaned. “What the hell is she doing!?”
Veronica came up behind him and her warm breath hit his ear like magical wind. “Looks like you have a stalker.” She laughed and pulled away.
“What should I do?”
Veronica went back over to the couch and slipped her shirt back on. “I don’t know, pal. But I suppose we’ll have to make it another time. That is unless you get married or something.” She popped open a fresh beer and began to drink it. “Want me to go out there and say something to her?”
“No… Maybe if we just ignore her, she’ll go away.”
“Chicks like that don’t ever just go away,” she told him. “You’re going to need to be forceful.”
He turned to look at her. “The only one I want to be forceful with is you. I guess you could say I only have eyes for you, Veronica Eyes.”
She laughed at him, but then turned serious when he came to her and stood before her. He undid his pants and let them fall. Then he guided her with his hand on her head as beyond the walls and windows Carrie Gould trumpeted the glories of her infatuation: “I love you Steel Brandenburg!”
The world is full of those who claim to dance with the vigor of advanced toast technology. But Henry Towel was like a bagel in a four-sided slot. He was an overly wired individual with exponential 1970s Art Garfunkel hair. But it was beyond even that. Henry Towel liked to play with light sockets. He claimed it never burned, but that it gave him something that made his mind anew. “It clears the pathways.” And made his hair poof and revel in a wild bounce when he walked or talked or whatever he did because he often jerked with a nervous energy. It was something akin to the teachings of the Elaine Benes Dance Academy.
Henry Towel was unemployed, once again. He could never seem to hold down a job for more than a few months, weeks, days, or even hours. He never fit in, anywhere. His attention span was that of a finger snap. Nothing ever kept his interest for very long. Not many things, at least. But he did like the dancing. He often danced all alone for countless hours in a dimly lit room near a window. He moved wildly to music by The Cure or Joy Division or other post-punk goth rock goodies. He would crank up the volume and shake, weave, thrust and jiggle like he had gargantuan ants in his parachute pants.
Henry once took a job as a night auditor at a hotel of mediocre niceness. The man who had hired him was a cold and salty old sod, like North Atlantic cod, with no hair and no sense of humor. On his very first day, Henry began training on the morning shift with a woman who needed to lose weight and brush her teeth. None of what she explained to him made sense. She was mean. She was short with him. She expected too much for his first day. She told him to take notes, but Henry just tapped at his oversized head with a finger and said, “No need, darling. I’ve got a mind like an aluminum trap.”
The procedures and rules and regulations of the job were so incredibly boring, the tasks so pointless and soul crushing. Henry was ill at the thought of having to do such a thing night after night. What kind of life is that? It was no life he wanted. What sense was there in continuing to live if that’s all it was? None he decided. That’s not why he was created by great Bog the fate sprinkler who sat on his crisp British biscuit out in space. And so, when it came time for Henry to take his very first lunchbreak, he walked out the heavy front doors of the hotel and never came back. He never said goodbye. He told them nothing.
It was January in a place called Colorado and absolutely freezing outside. It was all made worse by a bitter wind. Henry hadn’t even bothered to grab his winter coat from the employee lounge. He just walked out into the cold and drove home. He unlocked the front door of his square apartment that reflected the colors of a pumpkin patch and went to take a warm bath with bubbles of a rainbow sheen. For more than an hour he bathed and screamed at the gray day monochrome burst that rested there like a paralyzed cloud. The hotel manager never called to find out why he did what he did. Henry never got his coat back. He didn’t really care.
Henry Towel sat mostly naked in front of his computer and skimmed through job listings on Al Gore’s Internet. He was sloppily spooning cereal into his mouth from a round white bowl. Milk dribbled down his pale, thin body. He had no interest in making himself look any better with muscles or rock-hard abs or a firm ass. Even if he had the body of the greatest man ever made, it wouldn’t matter because his personality was so strange, awkward and raucous, his heart and soul so wayward, that no woman would be able to stand him for very long. “I’m a confirmed bachelor.” At parties, he would drop that particular cliché to anyone who listened, and then he held up his glass like Jay Gatsby and smiled and pretentiously laughed like he really meant it.
A job for a crew member at a local fast-food restaurant caught his attention. There was one line in the advertisement that for some reason spoke to him like nothing else had ever done before. It was a desired prerequisite by the company, a quality they were seeking… And this part is true, apply if: You want to make your customer’s day and it shows in the way you are maniacal about serving great-tasting chicken with a great big smile.
“Maniacal about chicken?” Henry thought aloud. “Do they really want someone like that? Because I can be maniacal. I can give them maniacal.” He went to the online application and filled in the blanks. Some of what he put down was true. A lot of it was not. They were probably so desperate for help that they would be willing to take anyone. Even an odd, fabricated individual with no sense of purpose in life. He hit submit, yawned, and went to bed.
It was snowing outside on the day a woman named Susan Gregory called him about the job for a chicken maniac. Henry agreed to come in for an interview later that same day. He even brushed his hair until it looked like golden spun sugar. He shaved until his face was smooth as mirror glass. He wore clean clothes. He was even somewhat excited.
The woman named Susan Gregory sat with him in a plastic booth in the corner of the dining area. She was the general manager and she smelled nice, like chicken and flowers, but she had those big artificial injectified lips that artificial people opt for, and she looked stupid. It was unflattering. Henry had a hard time focusing on the questions as he watched her mouth flap around like a swollen clam as she talked.
“Are you available to work all shifts, including nights and weekends?”
“Sure. I’m a very flexible person. You should come over some time and watch me dance.”
“How would your past co-workers and supervisors describe you?”
“I’m upbeat and easy to wrestle. I’ve got perfect tempo when I hum and walk. I can be a sophisticated jerk at times, but overall, I get the job done when it needs to be done. I can keep a secret. I’m a creative thinker. But I dislike people who have birds as pets.”
“Would you consider yourself to be a team player… And why?”
“Absolutely. The game of life can’t be won by just one person. Or maybe it can, but it generally takes an entire team working in synchronicity to achieve a common goal… And I believe here, in this kingdom of chicken, that common goal would be customer satisfaction.”
“It certainly is. Every day in every way. Because without the customers, we wouldn’t even be here. We would have no reason to exist. Now… Tell me why you want to work here?”
“Because I want to be maniacal about serving quality chicken with a great smile. I’m somewhat of a maniac in real life so this sounds like the perfect place to express myself, earn competitive wages, and have fun. Right? Because that’s how you all portray it in the job description.”
It was 478 days later, and Henry Towel was the new general manager of the fast-food chicken restaurant. He was sitting in the same plastic booth he had sat in with Susan Gregory when he himself was interviewing for a position so long ago.
The female teen who now sat across from him was nervous. She kept playing with her hair and biting at her lip. She had wandering eyes and a shaky leg. She kept sipping at her complimentary soft drink. Henry had his doubts about how intense her dedication to serving delicious chicken with a smile might be.
“So, Tina,” Henry began as he looked over her application. “I’ve worked here for a long time, and I must tell you, it’s the one job in my life I have stuck with… And do you want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I get paid to be maniacal about serving the best chicken, and I get to do it with an upbeat, electrified, often questionable attitude. But people love me for it. I’ve become a great success here. And if I can do it… You certainly can. Does that prospect excite you?”
“I guess so. I really just need to make some money to help pay for college.”
Henry was disappointed, but curious. “Oh. What do you plan to study?”
“Elizabethan literature… And business.”
“Business! Well, that’s fine, just fine,” Henry gleamed. “Working here could be an excellent opportunity to learn about business. And you get to be maniacal about chicken at the same time. Maniacal!”
“What exactly do you mean by that? I’ve never heard anyone anywhere ever say that.”
“I’m glad you asked, Tina. Being maniacal about serving the best chicken in the business with a great attitude… That’s our culture here. You can taste it in the air. Literally. There’s nothing like a bead of grease being flung from a piece of hot and tasty chicken and landing on your face. It’s akin to an African rain. In my time here, Tina, I’ve adopted new procedures that make the job fun and exciting and worth waking up for. I’ve untethered my workers from the restraints of the dull and mundane. I’ve released them from the confines of corporate jabberwocky. They are totally free to express themselves. It’s not just words anymore… I’ve given the work here a heartbeat. I’ve given it life! To be maniacal about chicken is to throw it around, to yell, to scream, to cheer, to smile madly, to be whimsical, to be fully enlightened by what we are doing here. And in that rabid enlightenment, we are fully engaged with our customers. Fully engaged and plugged in to all their needs. And people really appreciate that. That leads to success. Success in the fast-food chicken arena means everything to me, Tina. Everything… So, does it sound like something you could get into?”
Tina the teen slid out of the booth, reached down for her backpack and hung it over a shoulder. “I don’t know if this would be the best job for me. I appreciate your time, but I think I’m going to keep looking.” She started to walk away.
“Hey, Tina,” Henry called out before she reached the exit. “I’m concerned that you might regret this. Are you sure?”
Tina stopped. She looked toward the back, beyond the customer service counter. She saw the smiling workers, she heard laughing and yelling, and even the maniacal screaming. Chicken was indeed flying through the air. The employees seemed very happy. Maybe it would be the best thing for now, she thought. Tina reconsidered. “Okay. I think I’d like to give it a try.”
Fourteen years later, Tina the teen, now Tina the adult, sat in the same plastic booth of the fast-food chicken restaurant she herself sat in with Henry Towel so very long ago. It was showing its age now. The whole place was. She looked across the table at the young man and smiled. She looked over his application. He shifted uncomfortably. “So, Dylan,” she began. “I’ve worked here for a long time, and I must tell you, it’s the one job in my life I have stuck with. I ditched a college education for this. And do you want to know why?”
Liberty lies in the wake of a blue house ghost. Christmas glass shines like ass. A ruby red orb like a planet at dusk, in the dust of the Old West. Cowboys cling to the hard backs of horses, sunsets spill, tequila dreams drop like rockets from the moon into the sea. We see. Martians of nuclear clouds. We see. Buildings blowing like bubbles on days of infamy.
Felipe Flauta drags a 39-gallon gray plastic trash can from the kitchen to the back alleyway. It’s full of food waste and he cries as he turns it up and over the lip of the Dumpster. The lip of the Dumpster.
He recalls the clothing store chick in the mall who laughed at him when he brought her a rose and fast-food Mexican from the food court. “I wrote you a love poem,” he told her. He pulled the crinkled notebook paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
Her name was Glenda. Glenda? Was she a good witch? She was embarrassed as she took it. “I’m at work. I’ll read it later.”
“Would you like to eat food with me?” Felipe asked. He brushed the dark hair from his eyes with his fingers. “Do you like burritos?”
That made Glenda laugh as she stood behind the counter. “No. I hate burritos.” She had tossed up blonde hair and she wagged it behind her with a shake of her head. She was overly perfumed. “Don’t you know I’m out of your league? Because I am.”
“You don’t have to be so cruel,” Felipe said. He was meek. He was humble. He was shy. He was small. “I was just trying to be nice. I like you.”
“But I don’t like you. You are pursuing something that is bound to crush you. I really have to get back to work now.”
She walked away from the counter to help a dingy customer with some crappy, overpriced clothes. Felipe sighed. He held the bag of Mexican food tighter in his hand. He went back out to the food court and found a lonely table away from everyone else. He sat down and pulled a burrito out of the bag. He released it from the warm paper. It looked delicious, but he suddenly wasn’t hungry.
He sat stone still and thought of how Glenda had hurt his small heart. Small heart? Then he cried out. “My heart is large and full of foolish love!” People in the food court turned to look. Some pointed and laughed.
Felipe stood up. He reached down and took the burrito into his hand and walked back to the clothing store where Glenda worked. He marched straight to the counter where she was now leaning over and flipping through a dirty magazine. “Hey!” Felipe yelled.
Glenda looked up. She made a face. “You again? What do you want now?”
“It’s feeding time for all the animals,” Felipe said, and he threw the burrito at her face as hard as he could.
She made an ohhhughhh sound of some sort and it forced her face to contort and shift. The burrito burst open, and its contents covered her heavily made-up face. She screamed as she pawed away the mess. “What the hell!”
Felipe grinned because he knew he had done well in the art of revenge, trickery, whatever it was. “I’m not a fan of food waste. I had to use that burrito for something. Have a nice day.” He walked out as she wept.
Felipe Flauta leaned against a wall in the alleyway and smoked a Spanish cigarette. He was wearing a soiled white apron. The kitchen at Thunder Taco was a hard, messy place to work. He smelled of food and sweat. He always seemed to smell like food and sweat. Food and sweat or dirty dishwasher. He did all the dirty jobs. He figured that was because he was meek and shy and lonely and unsure and wasn’t always able to speak up for himself.
Felipe lived with his Aunt Grasella in a stucco hacienda on the wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of the city. His parents had died in a hot air balloon crash over the Grand Canyon. His siblings were all older and had moved on. Felipe had a small bedroom with one window that looked out on an alley. His bed was made for one. His existence was so completely singular. He had a stereo and liked to listen to old Rush albums. He would sometimes smoke marijuana and exhale the smoke into his pillow so his aunt wouldn’t smell it. One day she did and she got angry and made him get a job. And that’s why he was a dishwasher at Thunder Taco.
Someone called his name from the kitchen. “Felipe!” He tossed his smoke to the ground and went back inside. A cook by the name of Bryan told him there was someone out front who wanted to see him. Bryan was pretty much an asshole, Felipe thought. He never let him bum smokes. He was saltier than soy sauce. “Who is it?” Felipe wanted to know.
“I don’t know… But she’s a fox.”
Felipe wasn’t familiar with the term. “A fox?”
“She’s hot. She’s got a great body.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, man. Get out there before she takes off… Hey wait, come here,” Bryan said to him. “Let me give you a little advice. Chicks like her dig a guy who sweet talks them. You know, poetry and junk like that.”
“But I’m not a poet. I’m just a dishwasher.”
“Anybody can be a poet, man. Tell you what. I’ve got a line you can lay on her that is guaranteed to get you some action.”
“Action?” Felipe wondered.
“Dude. I’m talking about the ol’ in-out, in-out.” Bryan the asshole cook took his right pointer finger and inserted it into a hole created by his left pointer finger and thumb. He imitated the action of intercourse and grinned.
Felipe was puzzled.
“Sex, man! Sex! I’m talking about man on woman WrestleMania, dude. What’s your problem? Are you afraid of girls or something? Geez.”
Felipe looked down to the ground. He didn’t like the way Bryan the asshole cook talked. Someone put in an order at the window. Bryan looked at him and just shook his head. “I’ll keep the line to myself. I got to get back to work, but take some sort of action, man. Or you will always be just a dishwasher.”
Felipe washed his hands and looked at himself in a clouded mirror above a sink. He took a deep breath and walked out to the front of the restaurant. Glenda from the clothing store at the mall was sitting at a table by the window and looking out at the world. He walked over to her. She turned to look at him. “Hey,” she said.
Felipe sat down across from her. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you liked Mexican food.”
“I’m not here for the food.” She licked at her Disney Channel mouth and acted nervous. “I came to see you.”
“Me? Why? I thought you hated me.”
“Hate is such an ugly word.”
“What is going on with you?” Felipe wanted to know. He was feeling distrust. “Do you have emotional problems?”
“No… I’m sorry I made fun of you,” she said. “I act like that when I’m nervous. I know it’s terrible, but I can’t help it. I always regret it after.”
Felipe looked around as if there might be someone else behind the scenes pulling her strings. He thought it was all an act. “Are you a puppet?” he asked her. “Puppets creep me out.”
“A puppet? No, I’m not a puppet. What a strange thing to say.”
“Is that all you want?”
“Don’t you have something to say to me?”
Felipe leaned back and strummed his fingers against the window. “No. What would I have to say to you?”
“You threw a burrito in my face. It was mortifying. I was hoping you’d at least apologize, and we could move on from this. Maybe be friends.”
Felipe looked up and toward the kitchen. Bryan was hovering in the shadows and watching them. He was doing his ol’ in-out, in-out routine with his fingers again. Felipe cleared his throat. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
Glenda’s sweet-as-rhubarb-pie face morphed into a sour snarl. “What!?”
Felipe leaned forward and put his elbows on the table and looked right into her eyes. “I asked you if you wanted to have sex with me.”
Glenda fumed. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Yes. What’s the problem? Geez.” He looked across the restaurant at Bryan who was shaking his head in the positive and grinning triumphantly.
“Do you know anything!? Have you any clue what romance is? What love is?”
Felipe was more than surprised by her words. “Love?”
Glenda began to cry. “You don’t throw a burrito at someone who loves you.”
“What?”
Glenda suddenly stood up. “I love you, Felipe! I’ve loved you since tenth grade.” She covered her face with her hands and cried harder.
Felipe jumped up in shock. “This is hot and fresh and a jiggled mystery to me.”
She pulled her hands away from her face and looked at him. “You’re a senseless fool, Felipe Flauta. A god damn senseless fool.” Glenda dashed from the love ruins of Thunder Taco. She paused outside on the other side of the window and looked through at him one last time before running away.
Felipe slumped back down in his seat at the table and withdrew into his deeper self. Bryan the asshole cook sauntered over. He slapped a white towel over his shoulder and clamped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “That was rough, man,” he said. “Real rough.”
“She could have been my person,” Felipe said softly. “The one person who could love me forever… And I threw a burrito at her.”
Bryan took the seat across from him, folded his arms, and sighed. “And you straight up asked her to have sex. Damn, man. That takes guts.”
“And what good did it do me? She ran straight out of my life.”
“Do you love her?”
Felipe was shocked that Bryan the asshole cook would even utter those words. “I think so.”
“Then go after her. Go find out for sure.” Bryan got up and started to walk away.
“But I’ve got a pile of dishes back there that need attention,” Felipe called out after him.
The words floated across the waves of dying light as the whole of reality stood still. “Fuck the dishes… Love is everything and more now.”
Felipe looked around at his present-tense broken future. He got up and went to the door. He pushed it open and stepped out. The breath of Los Angeles struck his face, and he went into it and after her, his royal soul on indelible fire.
END
By
Aaron Echoes August
Check out the latest post at my companion site, Blowtorch Pastoral: The Baker.
High above the ghostly guts glow of a Southwestern American town on the outskirts of nowhere, a cherry-lime moon hangs heavy in a bruise-blue sky, an outlandish dapple over the desert.
Down below, an assistant mortician by the name of Kent Cumberland carefully follows the tip of the parking attendant’s orange directional wand and pulls his car into a space within a tightly packed line of other cars laid out on the flattened grass of a large field. He moved the shifter to P and shut it down. He gazed out the windshield at the insane world full of hope and desire. He breathed, and then wondered aloud. “Why do they say pull into a parking space? I’m not pulling my car. I’m going forward. I’m forwarding, not pulling. People think of the stupidest things.”
He gets out of the car and checks three times to make sure it is locked before he walks away. The air smells like sweet grease and farm animals. Carnival lights reflect off the asses of stars. He hears the noise of generators blended with bright voices and laughter and the carnie folk chants on the midway.
He tugs at his pre-autumn coat of tan corduroy that’s too small for him and smiles. “This is going to be fun,” he says to no one because he is truly all alone. There is no woman on his arm. There never is. There never was. There may never be. Kent Cumberland was far too creepy in the watery mind of the blue world for that, so it decided. But perhaps this night the swami beneath the moon and the canvas would sway some hearts in his favor. Perhaps.
Kent Cumberland has always been an awkwardly large person. Not overweight, just large. Robust. Ample. Big and Tall. He had an abundance of body mass. And now, as he walked toward the entrance gate of the 11-day State Fair on the crumbling pastoral eastern edge of Necromancer, New Mexico, he somewhat resembled a lumbering barrel, or more precisely, a lumberjack carrying a barrel, a barrel full of plastic red monkeys.
He nodded politely to those he passed and cheerfully greeted them, “Hello, hello, hellooo…” No one returned the gesture. The people just turned away, whispered, made puking gestures with a finger pointed down their throat. “I’m a very likeable fella!” he called out to the waves of people as they receded. “You just need to get to know me. I’m not a ghoul.”
As Kent Cumberland stood in line at the main ticket booth, he heard two women a few paces behind harshly insult someone in giggling whispers. It soon became crystal clear that they were talking about him.
“He must be here for the freak show…”
“I heard he keeps dead people’s body parts in his basement…”
Kent released one of his infamous exasperated sighs and turned to face his mockers. “Excuse me, I have ears and I heard what you young ladies just said, and I must sadly inform you that this particular carnival doesn’t have a freak show.”
The women laughed. One said, “Okay, thanks for the info, freak.” They laughed some more.
“And another thing,” he began, his usual puffy and pale face now taunt with anger and flushed a pink not unlike bleached blood. “I do not keep the body parts of dead people in my basement. What an abhorrent thing to say. Have you no respect for the dead? I’ll have you know that I wholeheartedly adhere to the strictest guidelines and moral ethics of my profession. But if you insist on scalding my good name with vicious lies and rumors, perhaps I may indeed be encouraged to begin collecting body parts.” He scowled and pointed an accusatory thick finger at them. “And I’ll start with you two.”
The girls shrank back, their faces twisted in disgust.
“Next,” the woman at the ticket counter called out.
Kent turned and asked for one ticket. “Thank you,” he said with a smile, and he made his way into the momentary lapse of another world.
The tent was lipstick red and sat beneath a yellow light attached to a weathered wooden pole. A sign out front read: Fortunes Told. Kent stared at it while eating blue cotton candy and thinking about how his mind shifted like tectonic plates and wondering if that was a problem for society or just himself. His mouth was ringed with the color of artificial raspberry. “You know, moon, I just don’t understand why they call it raspberry. Raspberries are red, not blue. Who came up with such a ridiculous idea? Ahhh… What do you know, you’re made of cheese and have aliens fumbling around on your backside even though the government denies it.”
A short gypsy woman wearing clothes from the old country and with kinky black hair and small eyes poked her head out of the tent and looked up at Kent. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
“The moon.”
The woman looked up to the sky and pointed. “That moon?”
“Yes, silly. Are there any other moons?”
“How could we possibly know… But it’s a good one tonight. I’ve been expecting you. Are you ready to learn of your future?”
“I think so.”
“Well, then come inside.”
Inside the tent, in the very middle on flattened dirt, sat a round table covered in a red cloth. On top of the table sat a crystal ball cradled by an artificial hand. There were two folding chairs at the table, one opposite from the other. The fortune teller lit some candles and the glow inside the red tent grew as it mixed with the hanging LED lanterns and made it feel like hell high on energy. She took her seat and invited Kent to take his.
Once he sat down, she reached across the table and took his hands in hers and held them. She ran her fingers over his knuckles. Her eyes were closed, and she took several deep breaths. “Tell me your name.”
“Wait… Shouldn’t you already know it?”
She opened her eyes and gave him a look like a snapping whip ferociously forced forth by the wrist of an ancient cowboy.
He shuddered. “Kent.”
“You need to relax, Kent. I can sense your tension. Breathe with me.”
He slowly breathed in and out, closely following her waves.
“Tell me something about yourself,” she breathed through a small mouth, lips like dry paper curling in a breeze.
“Last night I had a dream where I was in a park in the middle of some big city, maybe it was Central Park in New York even though I have never been there but would like to go. Well, it was night, and I was sitting around a campfire with a bunch of foreigners…”
The woman opened one eye at his remark. “Foreigners?”
“Yes, foreigners. You know, people from other lands. Not Americans.”
“Go on.”
“Well, for some reason I was holding my heart in my hands, the actual heart from my body, and it was still beating. I passed it to the person next to me and it went around the circle and each one there held my heart and just looked at it for a moment, but then the last person took a bite out of it as if it were an apple. He looked like Willem Dafoe.”
“Oh my. Then what happened?”
“Nothing. I woke up. But I had a pain in my chest. What do you think it means?”
The small, strange woman released his hands and moved her own crinkly fingers whimsically about the crystal ball as she mumbled an indecipherable tongue to conjure up some great vision from the orb on the table. “Yes. Yes. It’s becoming clearer. The fog is lifting.”
Kent was eager for a jubilant prophecy. He leaned forward. “What do you see?”
“I see… A woman.”
Kent’s eyes grew and his smile was like that of a supernova on speed. “A woman!? What kind of a woman?”
“A very beautiful woman. Very beautiful indeed.”
“What is she doing?”
“She’s… She’s sitting at a table with you. You’re talking with each other. Yes. You’re talking about your life. Perhaps your future together.”
“Really!? Do you think I’m asking her to marry me? How wonderful it would be to be married! Oh, I hope she says yes.”
“Shhh. I see… Why, I see that love is right in front of your very nose. Can’t you see what I see?”
Kent blinked his eyes as the fortune teller looked across the table at him and smiled. Some of her teeth were crooked and he wondered if one of her eyes was made of clouded glass. “You? You’re the woman you see in my future?” He frowned with disappointment.
She waved a hand over the crystal ball, and it suddenly went dark. Kent got up to leave. “Wait! Do you no longer wish to fulfill your destiny of love?”
He turned to face her pitiful stance. “I’m sorry, mam. I’m afraid I find you quite distasteful regarding the realm of romance. I suppose you could say… You’re just not my type.” He continued to walk toward the slitted exit.
The fortune teller quickly moved in front of him and blocked his way. “Please. Please! I’m begging you. Take me with you. Love me. I won’t be any trouble. I promise. You… You can just set me up on a shelf if you want. Or keep me in a closet. Look at me. I’m small. I just want to be loved.”
Kent released an exasperated breath. “I already have a pet. A cat named Captain. He doesn’t need a playmate. I’m sorry.”
“We can be lovers then. I know how to satisfy a man. I could make you feel soooo good.”
Kent’s eyes glided all over her and swabbed her with suspicion. He was searching for a hint of something about her that could possibly satisfy him like she said, but none of it felt right to him. “I think I’ll stick to my glossy magazines. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to go ride some of the rides before it gets too late.”
“No! You must not.” She dashed back to her crystal ball, waved a hand over it to open the portal of future thought, and gazed inside. “I see a terrible tragedy coming tonight.”
Curious and slightly frightened, Kent turned. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your life. I see that you will cease to exist if you choose frivolous fun over love.”
Kent pushed his hand though the air to wave off her thoughts. “Knock it off, lady. I see what you’re trying to do. Lies don’t work on me. How do you expect to be in a relationship with me if you can’t even tell the truth from the start.”
“But please! If you walk out now and go to the midway, you will die. I see it. If you are so concerned about truth, know this… The future does not lie!”
Kent scoffed at her manipulative vibes. “I’ll take my chances.” He walked out of the tent and toward the midway, a brightly lit cornucopia of mechanical color and noise.
Kent Cumberland worked his way into the seat at his place on the Ferris wheel and a grubby attendant lowered the bar. He was so large that he took up most of the space except for a tiny sliver where a teenage girl sat scrunched. The attendant paused to look at them, removed his oily ball cap and scratched his head.
“Is there a problem?” Kent asked.
“Nah. I was just wonderin’. How much do you weigh anyhow?”
Kent pursed his lips and his eyes doubled in size. “My weight?”
“Yes, sir. I need to be aware of any load concerns before I fire this baby off. We gotta have equal weight distribution.”
“My weight is in no way the business of a simpleton carnival worker such as yourself. In other words, bug off and let us experience some joy in life.” Kent turned to the teenage girl who sat beside him scared and uncomfortable. “Can you believe the nerve of that guy?”
The girl flashed him a worried smile and looked away. The Ferris wheel began to move. “Here we go!” Kent cried out. “Hang on, young lady. Hang on for the ride of your life!”
The wheel turned faster and Kent soon found himself at the very top of the world when it paused to let on other riders below, and he looked down upon the colored canopy of the State Fair in Necromancer, New Mexico and it looked like an electric body to him with all the nerves pulsing in a colorful schematic, the electricity pumping like blood through capillaries not collapsed, the voices and yelps and yawps of all that is good in the human soul and the brighter side of the world all congealed like hot-skinned lovers pressed together in a warm, wet bed on their second wedding anniversary.
“Whooo hooo!” Kent cried out, and he stuck his arms out and reached as high as he could so that he could feel the underside edges of the universe against his fingertips. “This is wonderful! Wonderful!” He turned to the teen beside him, her hair flowing behind her, her eyes and mouth open wide to the wonders of the stars. “Isn’t this wonderful!? I hope we never have to go down.”
And then there came a great creaking of metal and the carriage within the wheel where Kent sat violently shifted. The girl screamed. Kent sensed he was slowly tipping to the side. Orange and white sparks shot off in all directions like an electric facial.
The people below scattered in all directions as the great Ferris wheel disengaged from its own riveted cradle and began to collapse. Through the sensation of falling, that sensation where one’s stomach feel so funny but exaggerated now, spiked with real terror, Kent looked down to the ground as it came closer to greet him with a thundering slap, and that is where he saw her.
The fortune teller was standing there, glued to the cotton candy trampled track winding through the carnival row, and she was looking up at him and she was grinning at the same time she was clutching her busted heart, desperately trying to hold in all the stuff in her life that purposely broke it for her. She couldn’t bear for it to all spill out for the whole world to see now. She didn’t want anyone to know how deeply cracked she really was.
And in one final gesture before the metal machine of joyful memories came crashing down upon her to silence her visions forever, she thrust her arms up into the smoky autumn air, and in her hands she clutched a cardboard sign like political protest, and in red paint of blood and fire it read: LOVE IS EVERYTHING. NOW YOU LOSE. WE ALL LOSE.
He was blind about something as he drank milk from a tall glass and stared out the window. The leaves on the trees in his overgrown yard shook with autumnal fear. The doorbell rang. He hesitated for a moment, drained the glass of its milk, and threw it down into the sparkling clean sink and it shattered.
“I’m trying to focus!” he yelled out. The doorbell rang again.
He went to the front door and tugged it open. A young girl in a white uniform looked up at him. She was holding a basket, the contents covered by a white kitchen towel. “Hello,” she said. “Would you like to buy some eggs?”
He looked down at her, confused. “Eggs?”
“Farm fresh eggs,” she beamed, and she lifted the towel away and revealed to him the cluster of white ovals.
He looked down into the basket. “Are you sure they aren’t poisonous?”
“Poisonous?” the girl laughed. “They’re not poisonous at all. They’re delicious.”
The man rubbed at his chin as he pondered his present-tense situation. “If they’re not poisonous,” he began, “Then prove it. Come inside and cook one of those eggs and let me see you eat it.”
The young girl became concerned. She scratched at her polka-dot face and looked around at the surroundings and through his door and into this stranger’s world. It seemed normal enough. But then again… “I’m not supposed to go into my customers’ homes. It’s against the rules.”
The man sighed and looked out at the world around them, over her head and beyond. “I’ll tell you what… If you come in, cook one of those eggs and eat it, I’ll buy every single egg you have.”
The girl brightened. “Really?”
“Yes. But like I said, you must prove to me they’re not poisonous. The world is a wicked place and trust in others is very hard to come by. At least for me.” He stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in.”
The young girl selling eggs stepped across the threshold and he closed the door behind her. “Come on into the kitchen,” the man said. “I’ll get you a bowl, a pan and a plate to help you do your magic.” He looked at her and she seemed troubled. “What’s the matter? Surely you know how to cook an egg, right? I mean, you sell them so you must be fully committed to your product, right?”
She tried to smile. “Yes. I know how to cook an egg. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
He directed her to the stove and retrieved what she needed. She set the basket of eggs up on the counter and pulled one out. She cracked it into a pan when it was just beginning to sizzle with a slick of fresh butter.
The man sat down at the nearby table and watched her. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Penelope Witherspoon,” she said, focused on the egg that was frying before her. She gently shook the pan to check the consistency of the yoke. “I live on a farm down the road. My mother home schools me. She doesn’t believe in the formulaic indoctrination of the modern public school system. She wants me to be a free-thinking individual and not a robot destined to a life of servitude to our corrupt and soul-draining capitalistic system.”
“That’s good,” the man said. “Your mother is a wise woman.”
The girl flipped the egg and cooked it just a bit more before taking it out with a white plastic spatula and putting it on the plate he had given her. She turned to look at him. “Do you have any salt and pepper?”
The man nodded to the shakers sitting on the table like stoic chess pieces. “Right there.”
The girl brought the plate to the table and sat down. She reached out a hand and in turn took the salt and the pepper and shook some of each out over the egg. “I need a fork,” she said.
The man jumped up and retrieved a fork from a drawer and handed it to her. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Do you have apple juice?”
The man smiled. “You’re lucky. I like apple juice, too.” He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic jug from within a forest of other plastic jugs. He poured it into a glass and set it down in front of her. “There you go,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Wait,” the man said. “Don’t start eating until I get my phone ready.”
“Your phone?” the girl wondered.
“Yes. I want to make a video of you eating the egg… And surviving. Right?”
“That’s kind of weird. It’s just me eating an egg.”
“The whole world is weird, Penelope Witherspoon. We are simply adding a bit more to it.” He positioned his phone in front of himself and aimed it toward her. “Okay. Eat the egg.”
The girl cut at the egg with the side of the fork and brought a piece of it to her mouth.
“Look at the camera,” he commanded. “The world needs to see your face as you eat.”
She obliged him as she chewed, swallowed.
“Now smile. Act like you are really enjoying it.”
She smiled. She had big teeth that sat like aging tombstones losing their footing on the well-wormed ground of a spooky cemetery.
“Go on. Eat the whole egg… Don’t forget to drink the apple juice.”
She obliged him again. She finished the egg, drained the glass of its juice. She wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her white uniform. “There. See. I’m perfectly fine.”
The man stopped recording and smiled across the table at her. “Okay. Looks like you were right. I’ll buy the whole basket. Let me just go upstairs and get my wallet from my bedroom.”
A few moments after he left her, Penelope Witherspoon started to feel funny. Her face felt flushed, her stomach felt odd. Her vison was beginning to do strange things. She suddenly felt very tired. Her head fell forward and thumped against the top of the table.
When the man returned to the kitchen and saw her there like that, he knew the poisoned drink had once again served its purpose. “Like a porpoise,” he grinned, amusing himself with the play on words. “A preemptive strike on yet another evil of the world. Young farm girls selling eggs door to door… What a preposterous plot. Why would they do such a thing?”
He picked the girl up and carried her out the back door and across his overgrown lawn and into the forest where no one but himself ever went. The wind chimes in the low branches made their peaceful song in a breeze as he slowly passed through as if in ceremony.
He took her to one of his favorite trees and set her up into a place where two thick limbs formed a junction, a cradle of sort. “Here’s another,” he said to the sky. “Take her to that better place you always tell me about but refuse to let me see for myself.”
The man stepped back and watched as the clouds above split open and released a beam of golden light from the universe. The girl absorbed it and then slowly she dissipated along with it and the storm in its wake churned like time going fast-forward. There was a quick blink, and she was gone.
The man went back into the lonely, quiet house and cooked himself two of the eggs brought to him by Penelope Witherspoon, the girl from the farm down the road. He ate them. The only sound in the room being his fork scraping against the plate. His mind was struggling to remember what drinks he had poisoned and which ones he had not. He got up and drew water from the kitchen tap and drank that instead.
He cleaned the dishes and put them away. He took one last look out a window and then went up the creaking stairs to his bedroom. He got into his bed and turned on his side. He slept without closing his eyes.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 