A MESS
by Peter Breakfast
The
rain hit the pavement relentlessly and shined like the aurora
borealis with the reflection of police and ambulance lights. There
was a man checking his clock in the car for the fourth time in as
many minutes just because he knew he wasn't moving.
A
not severely injured man lay on the pavement, soggy and surrounded by
paramedics and a fireman and two policemen. And there were concentric
rings of people all around playing their roles well, from the next
row of cops, holding their belts and looking around or communicating
by radio about the broken windshield, smashed right fender,
scurrying, waving traffic through, placing the traffic cones.
Serious! Then on out to the people slowed in their cars around a
curve of highway for myriad reasons, spectacle included.
The
man on the ground woke slowly to the crowd around him like in the
movies. There was a stretcher coming now, everyone knew this. The man
felt fine, really. In pain a little sure, but nothing too serious. It
wasn't shock, this man was totally aware now, it was nothing the
insurance wouldn't cover, for him or the car. So his first conscious
words were "And you were there... and you, and you..."
No one got the joke.
Ed
was incredibly nervous, unwrapping a mcdonalds double bacon in his
lap, on the driver's seat. Tony was there, as always, riding shotgun.
The shotgun itself was in the trunk along with copious amounts of
drugs illegally obtained from an illegal immigrant. They were on
something, trying to move somewhere, trying to not try. And as they
passed the accident Tony stared with big interested sad eyes at the
man on the stretcher. Ed relaxed a little when they started speeding
up again.
Most
of the time when they walked into public places they were greeted
with a skepticism, a mild judgment because they seemed a little
anachronistic and were often high. They wore leather jackets, didn't
wash their hair, and had strange posture and mannerisms like they
were always sneaking around, looking for cops, but also trying to act
casually. And also didn't care. And Tony stumbled up to the counter
and asked for a "big... fat burger", didn't even read the
menu. And the preteen stared because she didn't know exactly what to
do here.
You
look at your feet and see dirt, maybe a weird waterless plant, all
the grains of sand displaying the definition of vapidity. And with a
tiny movement of the eyes you look at the horizon and it's vast,
baby, vast. A mountain, maybe, a road, no matter, billions upon
billions of each grain of sand, hopeless and boring at first glance.
People don't think of much abundance when they imagine the desert,
desolate at best, "what can a man do out there?". But the
sun goes down, you go to sleep, and finally it's cool enough for the
animals to come out, maybe. And the rain to fall. The plants don't
need to be leafy to catch the sun, they don't want it! There are
vibrant birds without light to show it off. There are snakes and
foxes playing or fighting.
It
attracts all sorts of interesting people too. It takes a special
breed, some ratio of genius and freak, to want to drive ten minutes
to see a new face, to haul water, to look out your window and see a
blank slate. These people own chisels I hear, are sculptors of sorts.
One
such person was sitting, hot, wishing she had a mailbox, on a lawn
chair in a trailer, making the most of her day by keeping an eye out
for a big black haired guy. "You got to keep him here until I
get back. I need to have a word with this asshole."
"Friend
of yours?"
"Don't
be smart with me."
Okay,
okay, ya nut. Whatever you say. Why would you want to talk to
somebody you didn't like? What's the point of all this anyway? Ain't
you lonely? It was a ridiculous situation, as usual, but she'd quit
asking why a long time ago. They were either lying or refused logic,
either way. You could never get to the bottom of anything around here
there were so many guarded layers. It seemed everyone always just got
dragged along for the ride somehow, except for Sue-Ann but she's
fought tooth and nail her whole life and who wants to do that?
But
no, nothing was said. He went off and she didn't know where or when
he'd be back, but she loved him anyway. Just sighed and wished he'd
quit smoking.
Darla
never once in her life cared for tall buildings. She was pretty aloof
and a lot of people mistook that for stupidity. She didn't really
care for thick books or marijuana or television either.
"I
do alright. But sometimes when I get real sad I'll just go out and
sit somewhere and just think it through..."
Out
to nowhere where her thoughts could do their thing.
For
some reason there was a pile of fucked up wet clothes in the corner
of the tiny bathroom, festering. A visible mold of unidentifiable
color. And someone came along later thinking it was a brilliant idea
to put some of those clothes in the toilet compounding the issue
tenfold by enhancing the stink and hindering efficient use of the
flush action. It was apparent too that people had fully used the
toilet and then tried to flush several times without first removing
any of the clothing from the bowl and overflowing it, the ground was
a putrid slime. Tony sat wondering, sober, trying to make himself
comfortable enough to shit, ignoring the fact that some yet to be
discovered bacteria could be making its way into his skin, playing
out every step of the process of how this bathroom got to be this
entropic. It was one asshole followed by another, each one actively
fucking up the niceness of the bathroom exponentially, locking the
disgusting factor further and further into permanence. And why?
Because they are for one fucking instant in their whole lives left
completely alone, unwatched? And this is how they choose to express
themselves, use that time? All the schools and education, fund
raisers and charities could never effectively combat this mega amount
of bullshit and disregard. Fuck. Fuck this. FUCK!
Ed
was an alcoholic, among other things. He grew up in an abusive town
with abusive parents, learned that right away. Then, like it was his
job, slowly got promoted to misanthrope. It grew in his brain, ate
big gluttonous meals. He learned to strategically navigate social
situations, judging and eliminating with only his eyes at first and
picking his battles carefully. By the age of nine he was off on his
professional life as a mover and eater of drugs, one of the only
positions he was qualified for. When he was in high school, in an
inexplicably popular student blog written by two cripplingly critical
girls, he was named number one in the list of top ten worst people to
be in a relationship with. He got angry easily, was judgmental, and
almost exclusively ate hot dogs. He treated women like shit and told
them he loved them. A total alpha douchebag ostensibly with a soft
side. Something in him, and he barely admitted this to himself, loved
to fight in any way. A goddamn predator playing the worst game
possible because he'd never win, and losing made him mad.
Tony
once heard that certain native american tribes called vultures "peace
birds" because they didn't kill to survive. It was something he
retained and told to people, to himself.
He
probably died pretty quickly. Sleeping or something anyway. could've
been dead for hours really, slumped over, eyes shut, ODed, gone,
elsewhere, whatever. And Ed was just cruising along. It was only when
the sun was screaming in Ed's eyes and he knew it'd be night soon
that he realized,
"Are
you hungry?"
And
a few minutes later Ed was pulled over staring into space, wondering
what to do with this body.
So
Ed came to our heroine's trailer and knocked.
"Hi,"
"Hey,
who are you?"
"My
name's Ed... and you?”
"Darla"
"Darla,
you got a shovel?"
"...I
ain't sure. Come on in while I look."
She'd
seen many men in this strange condition, and whether it was just how
men got sometimes or they were high on something she never knew.
Through
the haze of purpose, taking care of this crap, squirreling away that
money (the drug deal was done), rest was all he wanted. When he sat
down he started nodding off.
"Well,
that was easy."
So
Ed was there, and Darla was too, and she started looking at him as he
tried to sleep, wondering what was going on inside him, her hand
squashed into her face. The way he laid there, she was reminded of
all the men she'd known, his face looked like them all, too rugged
for their own good, beat up. Like Shane who would stay out too late,
or Jake who always took the blame, Sean was a nervous drunk. It
seemed so clear to her that they could live carefree if only they'd
thought of it, but she knew mentioning it was useless because it'd
have hit them like a butterfly on a brick wall--they'd say "yeah..."
but really be ignoring it.
And
she started to cry and didn't want to make any noise so she went
outside. And of course, from a distance she saw the car with an
obviously dead guy in the passenger seat.
So
there she was with the car and a dead guy on the ground, and she sat
for a while. Eventually she picked up Tony like a newlywed and
brought him back to the trailer. She set him in a recliner facing Ed
who was still asleep. With a weird nascent confidence-humility blend
she walked calmly back to the car and got in. The gas tank needle sat
directly in the middle. All she had to do was step on the
accelerator, which she did.
Her
tears had dried a while ago. She drove with the same detachment as
she did waiting for her boyfriend or trying to cook food. The only
differences were down here, where she unknowingly had probably too
much money in the trunk.
And
when Ed woke up half an hour later he'd see Tony, zombied, looking
him square in the face. And I guess he'd go from there.
