Monday, January 29, 2018

She's Junkie Cold



She’s junkie cold.

In here, his apartment, she sits on the leopard rug under the music cabinet. Faux-crocodile boots and tiger-print skirt. Her face is a trainwreck, all jagged edges.

She waits for him while the bastard waits for death, his body swallowed by snow, dying by inches.

Why is it so cold? She is as close to the stove as human endurance may allow, but snowflakes still form in the bones.

She wants to think she loves him but he hits her too hard. She loves the fentanyl. Even the thought of it gives her warmth followed by want. That patch getting slapped on her skin right now, it's enough to make her down below wake from death.

God, please, a cigarette. Anything to stop thinking. But he doesn't smoke because he's a doctor and he knows no joy.

The town doctor. What a catch!

Every time she glances at the clock it lies to her. Barely five minutes passed? This is a century of hell.

Why the hell isn't he home yet?

She wasn't cut out to be a housewife. Chores drained her, the silence maddening. He would come home to dirty dishes and dusty floors. Then he would beat her, for mother didn't know his wrath.

She wishes she could arch her back so far it would crack. End this nonsense. Instead she writhes and mews on the rug, like a poisoned rat.

When he arrived home she learnt to wear the costume. He didn't want a wife. He wanted a slut. A Moscow slut. But the weather wasn't made for streetwalkers, so she provided.

To please him.

Fuck him! She pushes herself off the rug and runs over to the cabinet, starts rooting through his record collection. There has to be something somewhere. She will find the patches. She'll slap on a dozen at once, and doze forever.

The patches made it easier. He was right. Getting fucked out of your head on fentanyl solved many domestic issues. Everything seemed profound, from the angle of sunlight off the vacuum cleaner to squeaking of the dishrag against glass.

But now the bastard left, and she empties his shitty records all over the shop. She picks up a James Brown vinyl and throws it against the wall, watches it shatter. No joy in it, she knows she must clean it. A weeping fit consumes her.

Fuck, fuck it all, fuck them all, and above all, fuck her. Fuck her for getting herself into this.

She must have done something.

But then.

An aurora, bright as sunlight, beyond the window.

She approaches it, watching the strange dance of energy across the dark sky.

Fucked on fentanyl, and not one patch.

She clasps her hands together, and prays to Him, like she is a child again.

Please God, please,

Whatever you must do, do it,

But don't let me get the junkie cold again.

Trainyard Angel



The kids freighthopped, sure, but they never took suicide cars.

They'd take a gondola with a wide welcoming trough, where the wind tears your eyes out, but never a suicide car. They had no floor. You crouched: legs stretched and arse on the bar, watching the ground rush under you. One slip, and down you went.

You have to be desperate, to hop a freight train. Beaten down by life, hopped up on dreams of the mainland. You’d try anything, except suicide cars.

So why did this kid try it, ponders Trainyard Officer Gorsky.

It’s midnight dark at high noon and his shift just ended. His poker game is minutes away. But he’s freezing his balls off in the trainyard, in the midst of blizzard.

All alone, for the trains are automated now.

He misses the drivers, misses talking to them. He's a bull alone in the yard, the last human in a world of dumb machines. But those dumb machines are bright enough to detect warm breath in the cold air. To stop the train and give him a call, with their telemarketer voices.

He shines his torch over the virgin snow: footprints leading away. The car holds no clues, no bags or stubbed out cigarettes. He sighs, knowing in his bones that the Transport Authority shall give him absolute shit if he just left it.

Can’t leave a kid to freeze.

TO Gorsky’s steelcapped boots crunch on the snow, sinking him up to his ankles. In the white wilderness he is a dark blip, an alien in many insulating layers. He follows the trail. The edges of the yard are lit up with floodlights, but he still can’t see a fucking thing in this weather.

The footprints grow shorter and shorter. Long strides become little steps. Handprints join them as the kid begins to crawl. God willing, he is too late.

But then his torch spotlights a beautiful man amongst the snow,

With a pair of feathery wings.

TO Gorsky should fall to his knees in supplication.

But, he’ll only be ten minutes late for poker if he left right now.

On the walk back, he reasons it was happy where it was, but he doesn’t know what he’ll tell his friends.

“You won't believe what I saw,” he says, practicing. “In the trainyard, I saw this guy… Not a guy. He was a… A trainyard angel…”

GUN HEAD THWACK



THWACK


I've impaled my hand with a nailgun.


Finishing touches to the gazebo's walls. A spot to read insulated from the cold. Distracted for one second.


I’m screaming. No-one hears me. Not my wife not my children not anyone at all. I am alone for miles. This is what I wanted: room to work on my projects.


My hammer will save me. But my fingertips come up short. I twist and dig the nail deeper but it won’t work.


The nail has crucified me. I bend and sob, it remains. I try pulling it out but I lose consciousness, it hurts too much.


I wake up pale. Blood loss. The cold doesn’t help.


The sun sets. Wolves howl. Perhaps if I had the shotgun in the basement or the rifle or the pistol on my bedside table, but all I have is my nailgun. Perhaps I could press it up against a wolf's neck and THWACK kill it dead.


Of course I would have to be very quick and very lucky.


The wind. From inside the house it helps me sleep. Out here it is the beast's roar heard from inside its belly.


My hand throbs.


I look out at the half-finished swingset. My wife persuaded me over the phone that one of these days my children could visit. Toys were required. I treated it as another project but prioritized below the gazebo.


If it was done I wouldn't feel so bad staring at it.


I black out again. I see things in the mist like the story my wife told to the children a hedgehog out to meet his friend the bear. I think he got lost on the way. A horse was involved.


I wasn't listening.


I wake again. Out here is no hope, unlike my dreams. I have nailed my hand to the wall. It’s done. The fence the woodstove the birdhouse the swings. The cabin I refurbished. The lake I didn't make.


This is all I wanted.


Fgures in the distance. Perhaps the ghosts of my past possibly wolves drawn to feast most probably exsanguination-induced hallucinations.


I'm going to die and will never see my loved ones. This is terrible.


“Oh shit” I say.


Not enough.


“Oooh shit” I repeat.


I feel nothing.


I lose consciousness.


An angel.


Open my eyes to figures closer than before I’m bleeding manages to seem even less finished the gazebo was a bad idea in the first place the cabin is blocked or I got it wrong start again the cabin blocks the lake no the lake blocks the cabin from the gazebo or


I lose consciousness.


Night.


Figures outside gazebo.


They're calling me.


I lose consciousness.


There's no escaping here.


I take the nailgun, it falls.


Lose consciousness.


There is no escape.


I grab the nailgun. I lift it to my head.


Lost.


No escape.


Nailgun. Lift head.


Visions.


Escape.


Gun. Head.





THWACK