soon i went to a doctor and he was able to remove the spraypaint from my face. i quit selling hot dogs from the cart, but kept the mangled thing in my garage as some sort of bizarre icon. during a blackout, i had taken a steel baseball bat and pulverized the thing, so it was now mangled. it just sat there, looking strange. i sometimes used it to cook hotdogs, it still worked and i loved stadium franks from time to time. finally i got bored and went out to apply for another job. i went to a horse stable and applied for a job as a shit shoveler. i got it immediately and went to work the next day. when i was done shoveling shit i would get down on my hands and knees and weed onions in the fields, throwing the onions into a wheel barrow and wheeling them into the store where i would wash and prepare them, then set them out to be sold. the pay was ok, 8 dollars an hour. working six days a week i brought home just under three hundred dollars every seven days. i was happy, it was the most ridiculous job i could think of, i had no responsibility and nobody even looked at me, let alone came up to me and tried to talk to me. i would shovel shit into steel barrels while sipping beer and puffing on marlboro lights, i cut down to lights after i got sick and wheel it back into the shed for it to be prepared into fertilizer. i learned how to do that and they ended up giving me a one dollar raise for it. but i felt empty and was still having dreams, nightmares about the incident i had endured back at the office with the islamic men cutting off the heads and tossing them off the tops of the buildings like empty beercans. they wouldn't dissipate, they hit me hard when i was sleeping, so i drank to forget them. it helped, some. i drank about a 12 pack of coors light at night after work, about six during the day while at work, i brought a six pack and cold cuts in a small cooler every day. went to a doctor but couldn't afford the medication so i had to think of something else to ward off the bad dreams and the flashbacks.
one day, drunk on summer drinks that have more alcohol than coors light, i found the woman's number i had met while selling hot dogs and gave her a call.
"hello julie, it's larry."
"oh, hello.
she sounded tired.
"how are you?"
"i've been better.
"what's wrong?"
"I'll tell you later."
"want to go out tomorrow night for drinks and pizza?"
"sure, I'd love to."
"I'll pick you up at six, showered and shaved."
"great!
she giggled. i smiled and took a sip of my lime beer. mexican. corona, what the hell.
the next day i picked her up and she swept me out of her trailer in the trailer park and to my car, and i wondered what she was hiding. we went to a great italian restaurant and got homemade bread, pizza, salad, beer for me and wine for her. we spoke as we ate.
"tell me about yourself."
"i left comtech after the terrorist incident where my coworkers were beheaded and their bodies and heads were flung off the building. they replaced everyone within weeks and soon i couldn't work there, just couldn't."
"strange, i don't remember that.
"it was on the news.
i thought for a moment about not hearing it spoken about in bars or anywhere else.
"it was on the news," i repeated.
"i don't know, i watch the news everyday and i don't remember it ever being mentioned. and i don't get cable, so news and sports is pretty much all i watch. maybe six hours a day i'm watching tv. i don't work, so i don't have much to do but tend to my children."
"oh you have kids?"
"yes two."
she quickly changed the subject.
"tell me, do you have any family?"
"just me and my father, and my father works in a casino in las vegas. he lives in a small apartment. i call him sometimes to talk about baseball, but he has lung cancer and still smokes. he should have died years ago. my relatives were in the ira. they bombed government buildings and killed people. they fled ireland when they got in too much trouble to stick around. they were terrorists. i try not to think about them or be anything like them. when they got to america alot of them couldn't work because they were drunks, and ended up on the streets drinking and taking whatever drugs came along. one of them got a job at a grocery store and ended up having a family. that's how i'm here."
"i don't know much about my family."
the rest of the night was casual conversation, until she asked me back to her trailer for drinks.
she had wine and bud light, which was fine with me. she had a tv, some toys laid around, various items. some food in the fridge. her children slept in a room together in a bed. when i watched them sleep for a couple of minutes, she became somewhat upset and drank down her drink then poured another. i drained my beer and got another, she had about eight and i figured she might drink one now and again, but it was the wine she liked. she was somewhat intoxicated, and wrapped her arms around me. i returned the embrace and noticed sores on her neck. she refused to let go until i asked what the sores were.
"i have aids.
i looked at her for a moment.
"mommy?"
a bald golden child stood in the doorway covered in what looked like bruises but were sores. he was misshaped and his eyes seemed to glow. he was thin as a toothpick and his ribs and backbones stuck out like he had mad cow disease. which was how he walked, like he was deformed, and i couldn't think of why he would walk with a limp. he wore boxer shorts only, and was pouring sweat and coughing. he hugged his mother.
"i'm hot."
she quickly took him back to bed and put an icebag over his forehead. she soothed him, talked to him until he drifted off to sleep. i watched, trying to piece things together. afterwards, she met me in the kitchen in her robe. she poured another drink.
"i was raped when i was fifteen. i got aids, and i got pregnant. my children should have died a year ago. i cant afford any sort of medication for them. they're twins. you probably want to be going now."
i approached her from behind and wrapped my arms around her stomach, and she melted into me. i undid her robe and it fell to the floor. i spun her around, and kissed her. my hands traveled up her small stomach to her breasts where i squeezed and pinched her nipples and her mouth tasted of wine. i picked her up, and carried her through her trailer to her bedroom, where she sprawled out on the bed. she was shivering, and hopefully opened her legs and parted her cunt with her hands. i watched the lips unravel and my cock instantly sprung up, i undressed and crawled on top of her, sliding my cock into her, sans condom. we fucked for maybe 45 minutes, until i came twice inside her. she had the first orgasm of her life. afterwards we both passed out to coast to coast am on her radio. some drunken maniac talking about making love with the queen and running off with the national treasure.
i awoke the next morning, showered and decided to go to the grocery store for breakfast items and some beer, even though i planned on applying for an assistant manager job at a burger king later on that day after the both of us had eaten, as well as the kids. bought eggs sausage and bread, a twelve pack of miller lite and a carton of cigarettes. somewhere inside of me was the feeling that if i could somehow give her children a decent life until they died, that all the fear and pain inside me would die, and i could rejoin the working class in an actual job i was qualified for, that is if i didn't actually have aids myself already- somehow i didn't care. i was dead already and working on digging my own grave. i wasn't even sure if i had survived a terrorist attack in the first place anymore. i was starting to think that none of it, the beheadings, the headless corpses falling off the building into traffic, the apparatus, even existed. i had heard nothing about it on the news, ever, or from anyone else for that matter. i had never spoken to anyone but julie about what had happened, and i thought that i never would again. i was standing at the checkout lost in thought with all the items i had bought in my cart. i paid with my bank card and drove back to the trailer, carrying the groceries back into the house.
"julie?"
i called, no answer but the quiet sound of a child crying. i set the groceries down and went into julie's bedroom, but none of the children were there, and julie still lay there, sleeping. i went to the children's bedroom, children with aids whose mother i had just slept with hours earlier and didn't know their names. both asleep, their bodies rising and falling. i walked back to julie's bedroom and watched her a moment, as still as a dead fish. i noticed a prescription bottle on the bedside table, and picked it up. it was wrapped in duct tape and there were two pills sitting on the table next to it. they were oxycotin. i reached over and turned her head to the left. her eyes rolled back into her head and she was cold. she overdosed, and my mind began to wonder as to how she could afford oxycotin off the street, let alone all the other things she had, if she didn't had a job and... couldn't afford medication? i did meet her on the street peddling hot dogs. i shook my head in disbelief. she was a fucking prostitute with aids, and oxycotin is very addictive, but not cheap anywhere. neither are children for that matter, whether they have aids or not.
i left the children in the house, took the groceries and the beer and drove home to my little house. i was going to get drunk now, apply for a job later. and i did just that, after eating three eggs and two large sausage patties. i fell asleep half drunk to a johnny cash cd. in my drunken sleep, i had a dream. i was sitting on a wooden chair in an empty room, with a tool box full of sharp objects. next to me sat many bell jars. first i began cutting off my toes one by one, with pruning shears. i felt no pain, and they fell to the floor with a gentle tap, blood dripping. when all my toes were cut off i put them all into a single bell jar, screwed the lid closed and set it aside. i set the pruning shears aside and took out a hacksaw and began to saw my left foot off at the ankle. when i was finished, after it had fallen to the floor, i sawed off my right, put each one into a bell jar, screwed on the lid and set it aside. then i sawed off both legs, one by one at the knee. it took awhile, but i watched every drag of the blade, through blood, flesh, bone or sinew. they fell to the floor and lay there growing cold. i set the hacksaw aside and picked up the shears again, this time cutting all the fingers and the thumb off my right hand with my left hand even though i was right handed. after i was finished, it all went into a bell jar, the cap screwed on and set aside and then it was the saw again at my right wrist sawing it off, as it held in the air perfectly still. it also went into a bell jar, but when my right arm cut off at the elbow fell to the ground with two ropes of blood, it sat there growing cold. after that, i shorn off one ear, then the next, and into a bell jar they went. after that, i sliced off my nose and added it to my ears. i slid my tongue out off my mouth and bit through it with my own teeth and spit it into the same bell jar. warm fluids ran down my throat, gagging me. i set the shears aside, and pulled a vintage silver spoon out of the toolbox and began to gouge out my left eye with it. blood sprayed and dribbled down my face but chunks off my eye fell onto my thigh which i picked up and dropped into the bell jar. i then gouged out my right eye with the same tarnished spoon, now stained with blood. soon i was blind and i felt for the bell jar with my senses in it and dropped in the pieces of eye, screwed it shut and rolled it into the other jars. i threw the spoon across the room, searched for the shears, found them after a brief struggle, slide them open down my stomach and slowly sliced off my penis and scrotum. i then fell off the chair, and lay there, struggling, looking for them, to fill that last bell jar. but i couldn't find them. i struggled in that darkness for what seemed to be an infinite, looking for my severed penis to drop into the jar before i woke up caked in sweat and tangled in blankets.
it was dusk, and it was snowing outside. i started a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. i looked out the window for a moment, then went and sat on my bed, flipping on the radio, basketball. i lay there smoking, wondering how long i had slept. i listened to the game for awhile, put out my cigarette, poured a cup of coffee, set it aside watching the steam rise. i thought to myself, ill go out and apply for a job at the BP station tomorrow.
kurtice6@hotmail.com
he'd love some feedback
he's a very lonely man