the world, too much structure and elegance.”
“Okay, so in your great conception of reality, what the hell happened to the mammoth?”
“We can’t know. Maybe that was where God, or aliens, or whoever was storing their equivalent of their Manilow recordings, and then they did the cosmic equivalent of breaking up with their girlfriend, and decided they didn’t want their Manilow anymore. Maybe it was just time to upgrade to a different format, like mammoths were 8-track tapes. Or maybe the mammoth DNA became unreliable. You know, maybe it's good that we’re so particular about gene therapy. If humanity is just the latest and greatest form of memory storage, then what happens when humans start manipulating the information around- when that data starts corrupting itself? It’s the same thing that happens when your computer gets a nasty virus you can’t get rid of. We’ll be replaced. And frankly I don’t want to live to see the extinction of the species.”
I don’t know if he timed it or not; he was brilliant enough to, certainly, but the sky turned purple as the rays of the setting sun struck the atmosphere at the right angle. I wasn’t sure I was ready to accept any conception of a god, let alone being a part of his or her CD collection. But as the sun flashed green before it passed beneath the horizon, I knew I didn’t need to decide now; I just hoped humanity didn’t go the way of the Manilow too soon.
Table of Contents
First Goodbye
Her skin is creamy, like coconut milk when it rolls over the tongue, the color of golden caramel drizzled over warm fudge. Her hair smells like lilacs, but not the artificial silkiness of a shampoo; it smells of the flowers themselves, as if she soaks her charcoal locks in molten petals.
But my fascination with her sensuality is neither revealing nor concealing. I take her in like a breath, hold her in for a moment, then let her go.
Her name flickers in my eyes like the light glinting amber off the ice in her glass, shattering into a hundred points just when I’ve almost assembled it. It isn’t important; I mumbled mine over a din I couldn’t hear myself through, and Shakespeare, for all his grace, was wrong over the scent of a rose, at least as far as the metaphor applies to a woman.
I’ve been dressed a half hour, listening to her breathe, watching the door as if it might abandon me here. At this time of morning, possibilities unfold like heavy fog, warming my lungs with potential lives. They blow out like cigar smoke too deeply inhaled, their hinted flavor lingering behind.
I’m a romantic, even if it won’t show. I bide my nights in searching for a woman I can’t quit by morning. That first parting is hardest; each successive one comes with greater ease. Life’s too short (and far too long) to spend its entirety pulling away.
My hand touches the chilled knob, but I hesitate to turn it. And I look back, something I never do, and she’s cloaked in a garment of moonlight. It draws me closer, and I sit on the corner of the mattress. There’s hours before sunrise, and it seems early yet to say goodbye.
Table of Contents
Life Imprisonment
I was cold; you might think you know what that’s like, but you've never felt cold until you’ve laid down on an Oregon sidewalk in January. It’s a cold that’s under your skin, that gets in your bones and travels into your guts. You get so cold you’re too numb to shiver. The wind was gusting, and the storefront we were perched in wasn’t shelter enough to stop it.
Still, it wasn’t raining, so I guess it could have been worse. Max wasn’t a friend of mine. He beat his wife half to death when she refused to buy him any more drugs; he said she loved him enough not to press charges, but not enough to let him stay. He’s an animal, now. He does things for money, to people- not for- for money; he’s lost the right to be considered a person anymore.
All last week had been rain. Then snow. Then slush. Then snow that became slush the moment it touched you. Then more rain. But always freezing, tiny, cold fingers that crept down your skin- you could feel it infecting you with the cold. This winter was worse, or I was weaker than last year, but I knew I wouldn’t make it.
I’m not proud, but I did what I had to. I took all the money I’d saved up. I could have spent a night in a hotel, maybe even a nice hotel, taken a bath, rented a porno, eaten in. But instead I bought drugs. For Max. He hesitated, but I told him it was for a happy Christmas. He told me it was over, and I smiled, and told him Santa had trouble finding him. Like the junkie he was, he put it all in his vein without thinking, and fell back against the sidewalk with a thud he didn’t feel.
I gave him enough heroin to OD twice, but I got paranoid, you know. The cops wouldn’t think I killed him, they’d just nod and drag him away, leave me out in this biting Portland winter. I jabbed the can opener into his throat, and I tried to open him like he was tin, but his skin tore easy and the can opener slid in. My hands came back a deep red, but they were warm.
The thing of it was, the streets weren’t empty. There were people hopping bars. I put out my bloody hands to show I meant no harm, and I begged them, “Call someone. Call someone. Help. Please.” They walked by without looking, like I was asking them for change. I rifled through Max’s pockets, and found change enough for the payphone, only when I got there I remembered that police calls were free.
My lefty lawyer tried to tell the court I wasn’t responsible for my actions; he put the system on trial for discharging me in ’63, he blamed Reagan for slashing social programs. I stood up in court and explained that I wasn’t insane, and didn’t want to plead insanity, and that my lawyer was a homo who’d blown the judge for a reduced sentence. The judge threatened to fine me for contempt, so I sat back down, and wondered if I’d accidentally outed him.
I fixed the jury, each one of them, and stared so they thought I’d knife them if I wasn’t handcuffed. They deliberated for a half an hour. I didn’t get life, but at my age, 28 years was close enough.
People think I’m crazy because I mumble to myself. They think I’m crazy for wanting to come here. They say maybe I’ll get stabbed. Maybe I’ll get raped. Maybe I’ll end up dead. But that’s no different than where I come from. The change is here, I got three hots and a cot.
Table of Contents
Crickets
In China, we’re kept as pets, and considered lucky. In Brazil, we’re counted on as tellers of fortune. In Barbados and Zambia, we’re welcomed as portents of windfalls. In Macao we fight- but at least that gives an honest insect an honest shot. Here in the States, we’re boiled alive in chocolate and devoured; the rest of us… well, the rest of us aren’t that lucky. "Is it awake?" Lisa asked.
"I can’t tell," Jim whispered.
"How long has it been since he ate Tom?" asked Cecil.
"I don’t know if you can say Tom’s eaten. I can still see a leg, and I think that’s a, that’s gotta be a wing," added Peter.
"Is it spring? Does anyone want to breed with me yet?" asked Michael.
"Do you even know if there are any females here?" asked Jim.
"I’m a female," Lisa said.
"How do you know if you don’t have any eggs?" asked Cecil.
"I won’t have eggs until the spring, dumbass- and I know I’m a female. Just look at my curves," she replied.
"Curves? You look like the rest of us," Cecil said.
"Dude, I’m not going to stop her from breaking off your leg and beating you into a stupor with it." Jim told him.
"Who asked you to?" he replied.
"God… I can’t believe this. Dying sucks enough, but, you know, I really wanted to be a mother," she whimpered.
"I can arrange that," offered Michael.
"But I’m stuck with- and I don’t mean any more offense than is necessary- but I’m stuck here with all of you. Even if I could enter estrus in time, your offspring would hatch with three eyes, three brain cells, three times too much testosterone, or three times too little," Lisa collapsed on the heating rock with a sigh.
"Not to mention the fact that your three-eyed, balding but bosomed retard babies woul
dn’t be able to get out of here, they’d just be late night snacks for Godzilla over there," Cecil added.
"Now where have I heard that name before?" Jim asked.
"Was it just me, or did the leg just move?" asked Peter.
"Whose leg, Tom’s, or the thing?" asked Cecil.
"I don’t know, did either of them move?" asked Peter.
"I don’t think so, but I wasn’t paying attention," replied Cecil.
"Then why did you ask whose leg I meant?" asked Peter.
"I was just trying to be helpful," replied Cecil.
"Hey guys, I’m not dead, I’m still alive in here, seriously."
"Oh, my insect lord," said Cecil, for a moment convinced the voice was coming from Tom.
"Hurry, get him to open his mouth so I can, crawl out of here. The smell, is, well it smells like dead us-es. Like a lot of dead us-es, like, generations on generations of," Jim stopped speaking to laugh.
"That is so not funny, Jim; I think I’d breed with Michael before you," Lisa said.
"Really?" asked Michael.
"No, not really."
The beast opened its mouth to yawn, then closed it, and, as if realizing there was still most of a cricket in its throat, wrapped its tongue around Tom’s carapace and smashed it down its throat with a sickening crunch.
Cecil panicked, and said, "We are locked, in a cage, with something that wants to eat us."
An older cricket poked his head out of the piece of wood. "Yep. And you’re going to die here, too. My name’s