I didn't finish the thing I was working on, so I'm posting something different. An experiment from a little less than a year ago. Somewhat fiction, totally strange.
AZO. Bags labeled grand ol' Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport, the mutual silver bird artery of the Cereal City and the land of Celery. Celery. Flyover country with its twisted pride, all covetous and grim and very, very serious. Salt of the earth. Salt. Earth. Assault of the girth, smug fat prideful ignorance, all wearing that merit badge of disdain. A beautiful people, really. Seriously.
Of course not direct from the Zoo. International maybe for a direct flight to Canada, for certainly it fits the semantics and works. It's different, perhaps, and there's some geographical boundary, certainly, certainly and that bird flew its coop to the bigger nest and, certainly, certainly those brave, proud Battlemazooians all gobbled up by bigger birds with fancier plumage and now shuttled off to God knows where, and me too, of course, for certainly, certainly I am one and the same as those others, more than they know perhaps or perhaps they do know or assume or maybe they don't care. That must be it. Care. It deposited me... where? Where was I gobbled? Gobble, gobble. Ah, yes.
Detroit and all its art deco still-birth glory, Harry Ford's golden fucking industrial wet dream but he never had the courtesy to change the sheets and now it's crusty. Rusty. Good Lord. Detroit. No, too soon.
****
"You're going where?"
I told him.
"No fucking shit. You're looking at... fourteen hours?"
I told him I was aware of the length.
"Well, it's no fun all at once."
Certainly.
"Well, there's a way. Two should do, doo de doo. But!"
The psycho. Greedy-grinned Saint.
"Yes, yes, yes, but!"
Again that grin. He grabbed my cell phone, took out four and slid them neatly, neatly, so pretty pretty underneath the battery and grabbed my hand and put the two there and God save me if he didn't cackle and chuckle and--
"A fly on the wall, my friend. I'd wave off the admission for that, but!"
It's a business.
"Indeed, sir, indeed."
Slick, slick, slick the money counted and exchanged.
"It's a slow burn, certainly, but you won't-- Ah hell, don't want to spoil the fun."
****
I wish I could say it was raining. The sun was out and shining and the city was beautiful there underneath the window. Ann Arbor waiting during the summer. Waiting for new people to mold, build and spit out into the world. Except I had stayed but that wasn't the problem. Not now.
The wood floors creaked. They were new and shiny but cheap and already starting to show wear but I slid around the boards already popping up from the humidity but there wasn't time to worry about it. Total obliteration of ego does that. I pulled open the drawer and took out the tiny bottle, the label peeled off, anonymous, drug-less donor protected, a hastily erected barrier torn down to distance the source and the final destination. Wonderful. What did she need these for? That was neither here nor there.
Pharma Junkie, a haughty bunch, with their disdain for the dirty. I reveled. No bloody ritual. Protestant pill popping. Cleanliness being, of course, next to Godliness. Of course.
A horse of a different color. Pure synthetica, laboratory distillation of that fabled, coarse junk, the fuel of madmen, that.
The sun was shining, the city was waiting and I, void of sanity, insanity, feeling and perfect, nothing from nothing and content had something to do. Something. But not now.
****
"Pillow, sir?"
Not now. Comfort is a sin, dirty, forsaken and not on the in-flight fucking menu and how dare you even suggest? What think you me, some comfort driven muck all bloated from the teat of luxury and ready to take take take your hypo-fucking-allergenic half-hearted neck brace and what good, you damnable harpy, bird-beast inside metal bird-beast fleshy polite symbiont of the dinosaur-shitting engineering goddamn marvel, will it bring for me to be comfortable at a time like this when-- No, this is too soon.
"I-- I'm sorry?"
"Nervous flyer, hon?"
You. Have. No. Fuckin'. Clue.
"You could say that." I managed an amiable-enough (and, of course, tinged with enough fake nervousness to hide that other, creeping, sliding shifting nervous, real nervous, anxiety burning its way through my body) chuckle.
"Take this and, if you need anything, just let me know, okay?"
"Sure, thanks."
Sherman tanks. Harpy.
****
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