Shock to the T-izzy
Prelude: Apopalopolis
The city is sick. In places it dies. The docks are showing early signs of scurvy coupled with a horrible cough, the cause of which no one has yet to identify. The expressways are congested leaving an uncomfortable nasal twang. The sinuses are sore. There is pain in the joints, a feeling of disassociation. Last night, the city went out under delirium and got lost somewhere out there. It only barely made it home. Lethargy, shortness of breath, hypersensitivity to light. China town has a leprous glow, and Germantown has a fever. The pulse is erratic and comes with cold chills. Pustules are forming and pus is running. There's a virus, there's an infection, there's a parasite eating at the core.
Broken Bobby leans over the streets below him. Five story drop. The wrought iron railing is held in place by the worm eaten wood of the highest balcony of the long abandoned Pacifica Hotel: the Presidential suite. He stares down the streets, down the alleys, and across the rooftops. He watches dreams, aspirations, hopes, memories. He looks at street lights, traffic lights, the lit up green signs of the freeway. He wonders 'How far away am I?' The night is black, but looks purple. The sky is orange. It is not an hallucination. Bad thoughts rise off the street like steam, like fear from an abused child, like the apathy of a TV viewer watching yet another mass murder on the screen, factual or fictional, like sweat from a fever. What is the pathology?
Five story drop. Broken Bobby studies it. Watches it. How everything looks so small. He wonders whether if he lets go, could he do a half flip in the air, just like in the movies, and land on his back on top of the wonderful soft garbage below? He looks into the open bin. Someone has abandoned an exercise bike in it. The equipment is covered with newspaper, shredded. It looks like confetti, blowing in the breeze. It reminds Bobby of a Japanese war flag. Bobby has never seen a Japanese war flag. Maybe someone is sleeping below that flag tonight.
Bobby imagines landing next to the old crusty bum sleeping below the flag, imagines simply falling like a feather, maybe landing on the exercise bike, peddling like a mad man with a rictus grin on his face. What would the bum do then? Would he scream? Would he wonder what had happened? Would he change religions? Bobby shifts his weight on the rotten wood from foot to foot attempting to get some sort of momentum behind him. How far? Twenty feet maybe. Five stories down, twenty feet over. Could he make it? He feels like he could. Like the way you can jump over anything in your dreams.
His body ceases to sway. Behind him, his arms grow tired. Soon they will not be able to draw Bobby back towards the railing. 'Like so many things' thinks Bobby as he ponders the point of no return. He is not there yet. He looks down again. This time he lets his senses wander trying to think of down as forward. How long would it take him to run the distance? Inside his ears, the equilibrium only surrenders itself momentarily and soon forward is down again. Soon, it is falling to be considered rather than running. Soon, Bobby realizes that he is reaching the point of no return.
-Help- cries Bobby and -Help- again. -I'm infected by this fucking city. Its goddamn contagious.-
That it is Bobby, but Slam hears you.
Slam. Ugly. Slam. Fiending. Slam, like a nightshade poison in a diamond decanter, is sitting lotus in the middle of the Pacifica's Presidential suite, his dirty black locks hanging far below the lapel of his second hand trench coat. Slam has a bounty on his head. Daily he laughs to think that life is hunting him down and is offering a reward. Dead or Alive, the sign reads, preferably dead. Slam pays the reward himself over and over again, and daily it changes. Today it cost him two hundred dollars. He got the money by selling cloned cellular phones, and then it was off to call in the debt at his favorite dealer's house. The man was not really Slam's favorite dealer, but that was the story. In truth, he was the only one home, only one who wouldn’t ask questions, the only one wouldn’t wonder whether the bounty was becoming a problem.
Slam can hear Broken Bobby, but it is a while before he can see his friend. Bobby is camouflaged. Chest forward on the wrong side of the railing. The stars beyond him are bobbing up and down as if the entire building were floating. Bobby is the statue at the front of the ship's bow. They are headed North, but Slam cannot remember why, or what cargo they carry. The sound of -Helps- rings out like a chanty.
The building is turbulent. The boards are rotten. They hold together with rusty nails and in many places it is necessary to climb to the next landing. The rats of the sea are an infernal plague. They eat the crumbs left behind. The stock. All the things that made the hotel great once are gone now. Stolen by this rat or that. Nobody notices until months later.
Slam is at Bobby's side. Broken Bobby's arms are stiff. His muscles quivering, losing strength by the second. Below, Slam's thoughts are confirmed. The street is debris floating in the water, and up against the hull of their mighty craft is an open garbage bin bobbing with a bike in it. The bin is a lifeboat of course, set adrift amongst whatever ruin floats in the water and passes for asphalt. He can see it rise and fall with the swell of the ocean. Inside the life boat is a bike, the handle bars are obviously for steering the craft. Slam marvels at the ingenuity of the thing. He has never seen a life boat constructed in such a way.
-Friend Bobby, you are not planning to jump with all of that crap in the water-
-What water?- To Bobby the street is swirling too, but it is only an image of a swirl that has been superimposed, a picture of water projected onto a movie screen. Below that, the street is very much solid.
Slam nearly falls over backwards as if he has yet to get his sea legs, but brings himself back up.
-Why the water below you of course. Anyway, besides all of that floating debris, I do believe that we are at least five stories up. I am, of course, unsure as to your level of expertise concerning diving into water, but I myself am nowhere near capable of landing such a stunt gracefully, what with the drugs and all. Didn't you take something too, friend Bobby-
Bobby did, he remembers. The mushrooms he ate seemed almost incidental to the sights he was seeing only moments ago, now he is not so sure. Perhaps, this is not reality, and if not reality, then perhaps his arms really aren't tired. He tries them out, his mind working under the assumption that the exhaustion is only an hallucination. One arm gives way, then the other follows.
Slam reaches out and grabs a hold of Bobby's wrist. Slam is much bigger than Bobby who still has some leverage with his feet against the decaying wood below the railing, but still there is much strain. From below it appears as though Bobby is trying to save somebody, far out in the middle of a mid-air stream, as if he were a hero, or a god presenting fire to somebody or other. Above, adrenaline begins to pump, Slam grits his teeth and pulls. Broken Bobby spins around almost slipping out of his friends grasp but he maintains and is brought back to the railing.
There is a crispness in the air, like frozen cellophane, and an electric charge below the orange sky that makes Bobby wonder what color the lightening would take were it to come at that very moment. Far away angry cars honk at each other, and from even farther comes the smell of the ocean, but no one can see the water in that strange urban darkness, except that it is the place where the city lights stop, a grand and indiscriminate darkness that forces the city back only through threats of drowning. Slam pauses as if he can hear the sound of the dinghies.
-Shrooms are not wings Bobby boy.-
The city is sick. In places it dies. The docks are showing early signs of scurvy coupled with a horrible cough, the cause of which no one has yet to identify. The expressways are congested leaving an uncomfortable nasal twang. The sinuses are sore. There is pain in the joints, a feeling of disassociation. Last night, the city went out under delirium and got lost somewhere out there. It only barely made it home. Lethargy, shortness of breath, hypersensitivity to light. China town has a leprous glow, and Germantown has a fever. The pulse is erratic and comes with cold chills. Pustules are forming and pus is running. There's a virus, there's an infection, there's a parasite eating at the core.
Broken Bobby leans over the streets below him. Five story drop. The wrought iron railing is held in place by the worm eaten wood of the highest balcony of the long abandoned Pacifica Hotel: the Presidential suite. He stares down the streets, down the alleys, and across the rooftops. He watches dreams, aspirations, hopes, memories. He looks at street lights, traffic lights, the lit up green signs of the freeway. He wonders 'How far away am I?' The night is black, but looks purple. The sky is orange. It is not an hallucination. Bad thoughts rise off the street like steam, like fear from an abused child, like the apathy of a TV viewer watching yet another mass murder on the screen, factual or fictional, like sweat from a fever. What is the pathology?
Five story drop. Broken Bobby studies it. Watches it. How everything looks so small. He wonders whether if he lets go, could he do a half flip in the air, just like in the movies, and land on his back on top of the wonderful soft garbage below? He looks into the open bin. Someone has abandoned an exercise bike in it. The equipment is covered with newspaper, shredded. It looks like confetti, blowing in the breeze. It reminds Bobby of a Japanese war flag. Bobby has never seen a Japanese war flag. Maybe someone is sleeping below that flag tonight.
Bobby imagines landing next to the old crusty bum sleeping below the flag, imagines simply falling like a feather, maybe landing on the exercise bike, peddling like a mad man with a rictus grin on his face. What would the bum do then? Would he scream? Would he wonder what had happened? Would he change religions? Bobby shifts his weight on the rotten wood from foot to foot attempting to get some sort of momentum behind him. How far? Twenty feet maybe. Five stories down, twenty feet over. Could he make it? He feels like he could. Like the way you can jump over anything in your dreams.
His body ceases to sway. Behind him, his arms grow tired. Soon they will not be able to draw Bobby back towards the railing. 'Like so many things' thinks Bobby as he ponders the point of no return. He is not there yet. He looks down again. This time he lets his senses wander trying to think of down as forward. How long would it take him to run the distance? Inside his ears, the equilibrium only surrenders itself momentarily and soon forward is down again. Soon, it is falling to be considered rather than running. Soon, Bobby realizes that he is reaching the point of no return.
-Help- cries Bobby and -Help- again. -I'm infected by this fucking city. Its goddamn contagious.-
That it is Bobby, but Slam hears you.
Slam. Ugly. Slam. Fiending. Slam, like a nightshade poison in a diamond decanter, is sitting lotus in the middle of the Pacifica's Presidential suite, his dirty black locks hanging far below the lapel of his second hand trench coat. Slam has a bounty on his head. Daily he laughs to think that life is hunting him down and is offering a reward. Dead or Alive, the sign reads, preferably dead. Slam pays the reward himself over and over again, and daily it changes. Today it cost him two hundred dollars. He got the money by selling cloned cellular phones, and then it was off to call in the debt at his favorite dealer's house. The man was not really Slam's favorite dealer, but that was the story. In truth, he was the only one home, only one who wouldn’t ask questions, the only one wouldn’t wonder whether the bounty was becoming a problem.
Slam can hear Broken Bobby, but it is a while before he can see his friend. Bobby is camouflaged. Chest forward on the wrong side of the railing. The stars beyond him are bobbing up and down as if the entire building were floating. Bobby is the statue at the front of the ship's bow. They are headed North, but Slam cannot remember why, or what cargo they carry. The sound of -Helps- rings out like a chanty.
The building is turbulent. The boards are rotten. They hold together with rusty nails and in many places it is necessary to climb to the next landing. The rats of the sea are an infernal plague. They eat the crumbs left behind. The stock. All the things that made the hotel great once are gone now. Stolen by this rat or that. Nobody notices until months later.
Slam is at Bobby's side. Broken Bobby's arms are stiff. His muscles quivering, losing strength by the second. Below, Slam's thoughts are confirmed. The street is debris floating in the water, and up against the hull of their mighty craft is an open garbage bin bobbing with a bike in it. The bin is a lifeboat of course, set adrift amongst whatever ruin floats in the water and passes for asphalt. He can see it rise and fall with the swell of the ocean. Inside the life boat is a bike, the handle bars are obviously for steering the craft. Slam marvels at the ingenuity of the thing. He has never seen a life boat constructed in such a way.
-Friend Bobby, you are not planning to jump with all of that crap in the water-
-What water?- To Bobby the street is swirling too, but it is only an image of a swirl that has been superimposed, a picture of water projected onto a movie screen. Below that, the street is very much solid.
Slam nearly falls over backwards as if he has yet to get his sea legs, but brings himself back up.
-Why the water below you of course. Anyway, besides all of that floating debris, I do believe that we are at least five stories up. I am, of course, unsure as to your level of expertise concerning diving into water, but I myself am nowhere near capable of landing such a stunt gracefully, what with the drugs and all. Didn't you take something too, friend Bobby-
Bobby did, he remembers. The mushrooms he ate seemed almost incidental to the sights he was seeing only moments ago, now he is not so sure. Perhaps, this is not reality, and if not reality, then perhaps his arms really aren't tired. He tries them out, his mind working under the assumption that the exhaustion is only an hallucination. One arm gives way, then the other follows.
Slam reaches out and grabs a hold of Bobby's wrist. Slam is much bigger than Bobby who still has some leverage with his feet against the decaying wood below the railing, but still there is much strain. From below it appears as though Bobby is trying to save somebody, far out in the middle of a mid-air stream, as if he were a hero, or a god presenting fire to somebody or other. Above, adrenaline begins to pump, Slam grits his teeth and pulls. Broken Bobby spins around almost slipping out of his friends grasp but he maintains and is brought back to the railing.
There is a crispness in the air, like frozen cellophane, and an electric charge below the orange sky that makes Bobby wonder what color the lightening would take were it to come at that very moment. Far away angry cars honk at each other, and from even farther comes the smell of the ocean, but no one can see the water in that strange urban darkness, except that it is the place where the city lights stop, a grand and indiscriminate darkness that forces the city back only through threats of drowning. Slam pauses as if he can hear the sound of the dinghies.
-Shrooms are not wings Bobby boy.-
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
11:37 AM
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