starting something
A kid in the mire. Words and questions, phrases and comments, clauses and sentences. Shuh-man and his lover. A light drawl. That's what he needed. A soft, sultry, southern syntax in his ear. A pair of friendly lips in this desolate town. Sinking deeper in the bog, his mind relaxed. Ankles, knees, waist, belly-button, nipples, neck. Inch by inch the thick, murky film coated every inch of his body, traveling towards his dome like death's cold chill. Sadly satisfying, it was. Neck arched, eyes closed, nose up, life was kicking the door open, and the end was trudging in like an inspired, gaseous haze. Panting his last wisps of mortality like Mr. Ilych, it was leaving him.
'IIIIIIIt's fucking Friday mi amigo! Who's ready to get laid? Oh, I know, Stone! Stone! Oh, pick him! He's a fucking mess! Pick Stone! Fuck him! Fuck him, ladies! That poor sap in the corner with his eyes closed! For God's sake! Somebody fuck this boy! Fuck him into the real world!'
A white hand grabbed him. He was off the edge, horizontal, peering into the abyss of salvation. What would take him from his hideous existence. And a white hand grabbed his scalp and ripped him back onto this putrid land.
'Fuck off Jack.'
'Just pumping a little vitality into your hollow frame.'
'Hmph.'
'Smoke?'
'Hmm.'
Grabbing their coats, the pair made way to the exterior.
'Fucking biting, eh? Need a light?'
'Nah.'
He dragged long and hard, pulling to excess.
'...And this fuckin' prick has the nerve to say...'
Puff one, puff two. The wind was gone. The smoke was making a barrier. The sound could hardly get through it. He couldn't hear.
'...So I tell the ass that I shit better words then he could come up with...'
Arrogant fuck.
'...I mean, right?...'
Where was this even going? He didn't know, and he wagered neither did Jack. The kid fucking rambled, that's for sure.
'Right?'
'Yeah. What a fuckin' asshole, man.'
'That's what I'm saying! He thinks he's some divinely sanctioned prophet of words. He thinks he can tear anything up because he's better then anything. Fuckin' self-righteous prick.'
'Yeah.'
'Done?'
'Nah.'
'Well, I'm headin' in. Grabbed a bottle earlier, gotta get goin'.'
'Hmm.'
Ahh, peace. He looked down. Unlaced. His glasses rested on his nose, crooked. The wind picked up, whipping around his ears, consuming his hair with frenzied energy, pulling each strand in opposite directions to the edges of the world.
But it wasn't there. The wind, the chill, the snow, the bitter taste of afternoon waking and cigarettes. He couldn't feel it. He was numb. All was silent. He could hear a sound mounting in the distance, racing out of the depths of his memory like a chariot in the Coliseum. He heard his mother, walking through the back door, barefoot, with a wicker basket of line-dried linen. He heard her calling, but not what she said. Her soothing voice, drenching his senses like a warm falls. He didn't notice the auto on his left. He was walking across the road, arms extended, reaching towards the escaping voice of his mother, receding into the darkness of his senses like the setting sun.
The car swerved, honking loudly. His mother shattered into a thousands of little fragments, falling through the ground below him, untraceable and irrecoverable, even as he dragged his bare hands across the snow, bringing all the pink hue to the surface. Spitting on the ground, his warm mucus burning through the thick powder like a dangerous acid, he rose, stepping lightly back to his building, so as to maybe catch one more noise from his mother. But nothing came except the the unforgiving wind.
