time for nothingness
*poof*
“So, Oscar, I have a question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“How do I get rid of alice?”
“You don’t.”
CUT
let me tell you one thing: park ridge on acid is rough to say the least. everyone is dead inside the rich-ass houses. they’re continuously living and reliving out their own deaths like it was dinner on sunday night with the family. and i think i died a little myself, trying to see something through it all.
to fuck
and to be fucked
is experiential
experimental
then dip
double dip
drop
i’m gone to the church where the entire band is dressed up like animals and even bugs (there was a cockroach on stage). church was hell. burning and melting eternally under the lights of heaven. where has the lord gone? to the park?
the park was all monkeys uncaged. let loose from the zoo playing frisbee with a garbage can lid and swinging from the treetops. mcmuffin sat against the plastic tic-tac-toe display looking trashed.
“you all right, man” i said
“yeah, dude, i’m just really fucked up”
“on what?”
“many things”
he was trying to tic-tac-toe his life back together with no success of getting three in a row.
then we left: the spic, nigger, and cracker. to walgreens.
seriously though, walking through walgreens on acid is kind of excruciating. the aisles are so bright and whatever. so candice and i had to use the bathroom there.
INTHISBATHROOM:
staringinmirror: eyessuperdilated
staringinmirror: eyessuperdilated
i walked back out to wait for candice. it felt like i was standing in that toy aisle for eternity and beyond. 2001 space odyssey type shit; but only with bratz dolls and little kid drawing books and lights burning my face.
when she was done in the bathroom we went over to the health care section where no one was hanging around.
boom. my ass in the chair. way too bright lights.
empty outlets beg to be stoppered by a cell phone charger. and i waited like i always seem to end up doing. charging a cell phone for christ’s sake. women...
and ending with a half-remembered conversation with her mother.
this time, we left. returning to the car and the mexican from whence we came.
“now what?”
somehow we ended up at the nuthouse. this is how i dubbed it in transit. on acid, nothing seems illegal, nothing seems idiotic. aleks (the violet perfect) lived there for a time i gathered and since i hadn’t laid eyes upon her in infinity, i decided to discover if her body was in the house.
i think i lost something here. hold up a bit...
*cough* i told oscar and candice to wait for me out front while i decided whether i really intended to break into the house. swooping around the the back, i only was half-aware of what was happening. slipping away is a slow process. kind of like the waves lapping a shore. in and out. sometimes you’re in and sometimes you’re out.
first glance there was no sign of any bodies dead or alive, inside or outside. so i stretched out my hands over the sliding glass door and slowly slid it open. then scurried inside. i walked through the house cautiously, swallowing now and then and licking my lips.
cautiously, slowly i approached the stairs that led upstairs. i noticed to the side of me aleks’s old room. it was empty except for a lone table in the middle covered with lit candles. i pulled my head away and looked up the stairs.
“aleks”
after a second she poked her head up from the top of the stairs. recognition on her face.
“david? how are you?” she walked down the stairs to meet me.
we hugged and then i looked at her. she looked older, used up, tired, and fat. so different from the person i used to know at one time. the infinite span of years gives way to the idea of the infinite nazi. once a nazi, always a nazi. the eye of the cornerstone keeps you locked forever in its grasp, draining your fruitless body of all remembrance.
then HE came down the stairs. only a boy, but posing as a man with a penis. but from the lack of one, death soon comes to claim the forgotten ones. skinniest kid i had ever seen in my life, just wearing pants i could see every bone clearly defined under the thin translucent skin stretched tight. he was holding his side.
“you okay?” i said to the apparition
“do you know anything about muscle pain. something wrong with my side.”
“sorry, man.”
i paused for a second here then turned to aleks.
“my friends are outside. is it cool if they come in for a minute?”
she opened the front door to let in oscar and candice. coming inside the door, candice asked if they had an outlet nearby. we all went to the kitchen where she could charge the cell for a minute.
the skinny dude was still holding his side in pain. he asked the question again if any of us knew anything about pain.
oscar stared at the kid intently.
me: “dude, you should eat something”
he just looked at me like i was retarded.
this is it
this is not the answer
this is not the answer
the answer is... ding ding ding ding
AT LEAST WE GOT A CHARGE
the cell phone was charging on the counter of this hopeless kitchen and i stood entranced by the scene unfolding in front of my dilated eyes.
“you look a little, uh... different” i said. “haven’t seen you in a while” this dialog was done toward aleks’s direction.
“yeah, i’ve been in the hospital for three weeks”
“oh, shit”
“my mother had me committed again. they read all my journals and said it was just nonsensical scribblings and rantings about the government”
i stood there, probably with my jaw hanging nearly to the floor like a jellyfish out of water. stroking the air, i tried to find my balance as she talked about the psych ward. difficulty handling this material on acid may have been apparent to an onlooker.
“they came and took me away and shot me in the asshole with a giant needle”
she looked at me with her tired eyes and i didn’t have a clue how to respond to her. she just kept on though.
“there was this one woman who kept shitting herself in her room and they made her crawl through her own shit to get out to the hallway. and also because of the pills they gave me while i was inside i have permanent tremors. that won’t go away”
she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. skinny boy was already smoking one. oscar was standing next to the boy with a far away look in his eyes. the cloud of smoke wafted past his face.
skinny kid turned his head toward oscar. “is the smoke bothering you?”
oscar shook his head.
“are they on something hard?” this question was directed at candice.
“is acid hard?” she said.
somehow after that we all migrated to the living room and what i remember is that i was in the doorway to the kitchen looking out over the living room. oscar was a little ways in front of me with a little smirk on his face and he was looking slightly down toward the ground. skinny boy was off to my right with a giant sketchpad out. i stared deeply into his drawing. there were three giant eyes in the middle of the page and all he was doing was dragging a black pencil across the white to fill the whole background in to be blackness.
i looked up and suddenly slo-mo kicked into my brain. like a semi-mellow-dramatic music video played ad nauseam on MTV. aleks was in front of the couch and it looked like she was on her cell phone. she looked dragon ball z pissed off and all she screamed was the words “I’M AN ARTIST!”
and she proceeded to drop the phone and flip off the tv. all of a sudden noelle, the woman who owned the house came stomping onto the porch. we could see her through the sliding glass door. she also looked dragon ball z pissed off. when she got to the door she beat on the glass with both fists.
“I TOLD YOU NOT TO SMOKE IN THE FUCKING HOUSE!”
we booked ass to the front room of the house to avoid the screaming witch. aleks sat down on the stairs and put her hands over her ears.
“i can’t handle yelling. i can’t handle yelling. i can’t handle yelling. they’re gonna shoot me in the asshole with needles again aren’t they?”
and
we
ran the fuck
out
of there
back in the car we could breathe a sigh of relief, but the night wasn’t over and the effects were still going.
then oscar spoke.
“can we go pick this girl up from work?”
“who? from where?”
“her name’s beatriz. she works at best buy. i think everything will be okay once we go pick this girl up. it’ll be the end to a crazy-ass night”
candice: “yeah, that was a nuthouse. at least we got a charge”
and it was like star wars and we were in the millennium falcon warp speed through the streets, lights and buildings like stars whizzing past the car.
before i knew it, we were back at oscar’s. standing around making food and talking about the trip and alice.
“So, Oscar, I have a question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“How do I get rid of alice?”
“You can’t.”
CUT
