Landslide




Ricardo, he ran. He ran his way up the hill, fighting rocky ground and the sharp incline, slow like a bad dream, heavy with the awareness that he was finally caught. These moments were the moments: his last moments of freedom, his ten days of dynamite come to ash and rubble. His heels already raw, his feet bend and camber to clutch the round rocks that ran up the slope ahead. He just needed a foothold... he had to gain traction.

He could hear the officer from over his shoulder: “Halt!"

Halt?

The hill was almost too steep to take without climbing, just a quarter mile off the Pacific Coast Highway, just a quarter mile away from Ricardo’s DeSoto with the flat tire, his jack and tire iron resting on the side of the road amidst a handful of fresh cigarette butts. The music on the car radio was playing that new tune he liked… he could still hear it in his head. It all seemed so far away… so long ago…

“Halt!”

This was the young policeman again, the one who had pulled over to Ricardo’s stopped car and recognized his face from the papers. This kid was fresh out the academy, fresh out of breath, running rough, speaking in a language long expired, dialect from the stone age. Or the picture shows.

Ricardo heard the cop again, “Get back here!” but he decided not to oblige. He heard a shot fired, knew the police man was shooting, but there was no time to check himself for fresh holes. The muscles in his ankles were buckling from the ragged gravel, the balls of his feet bruising and losing rake against the stones. And now the rock floor made rumble, the stones now were spinning, shifting, awakened out of their sleep and up on the wrong side of the bed.

Then the rocks they started falling, tumbling in bundles, dirt kicked up in to the air as the rolling stones gathered momentum, a symphony of gravity, knocking heads, accumulating speed. The dead leaves flew up and sailed down slow and lazy. Ricardo felt a round boulder turn beneath his ankle & he found himself airborne. He was ready for the landing, the impact and destruction. Before he fell he saw the large rock behind him break loose and take a bad bounce, launch into the skyway & land with a soft crunch against the head of the cop horizontal, splitting his skull easy, the human helmet fail its crash test.

Steam from the brain escaping in the early winter chill.

When Ricardo came down he landed on his humerus bone, cracking it ultra-fine in four places. The arm was now hanging at an angle obtuse: unnatural and helpless to hold. The rocks had made a bad mattress: he could feel the two shattered ribs and a cracked collarbone, and all the while the boulders continued their slide, hitting him with sucker-punches, tenderizing his body. He tasted blood and wondered where it was from, the pain with milk and sugar, like an endless cup of coffee, keeping him awake as the rocks continued to roll. He needed help.

There was no air in his lungs to howl and so, just wait… just a minute. He thought only briefly of the salseman in his trunk, wondered if the poor man whose car he had hijacked had bled out or was there was more life inside. Then Ricardo looked inward, wondered how much life there was inside himself. It was a wonderful ten days... he felt himself smiling in spite of the wounds. He would be alright... he just needed a minute to catch his breath, to learn to ignore the pain. He just needed one minute.

He just needed one minute more.


Let's Fuck With Pizza Hut



[The following is a transcript of a phone call I placed on May 29th, 2o15]

Pizza Hut: Thank you for calling Pizza Hut, this is Erica- what can I get for you?

Sick City: What’s good tonight?

PH:
Um, good tonight?

SC: What’s fresh and exciting? Surprise me!

(dead silence)

PH: All the pizza is fresh. Pizza.

SC: To tell you the truth I don’t even know if I feel like pizza. Sell me! Convince me. That it’s a good-

PH: Do you want to order a pizza?

SC: What do you want on that pizza?

PH: What do I want?

SC: You sound like a pepperoni girl... do you believe in pepperoni?

[long pause]

PH: Yeah, we have pepperoni.

SC: What do you like? What do you like on your pepperoni pizza?

PH: My pepperoni pizza?

SC: What turns you on? Sexually? Do you like to be-

PH: This call is all kinds of uncomfortable. I don’t think-

SC: Can I spank you and call you Katie?

PH: Oh my god…

[click]

SC: Hello? Hello?!? Katie, are you there?





Police Stories




An old woman ran up to a police officer.

"There's a maniac fucking up the Safeway!" she screamed.

The policeman pulled out his gun and shot her dead.

He never shopped at Safeway.


***

A female police officer had to take a spree, so she ducked into a diner.

"May I use your restroom?" she asked.

"We have no toilet here," said the cook, flipping a hamburger on the grill.


***

  Two police officers were eating cheese on the street.

"I could eat fifteen pounds of cheese," said the first officer.

The second officer shot him dead.

"I have always been lactose intolerant."


***


The chief of police saw a hobo pissing in the alley.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked the hobo.

“I am an undercover officer in a sting operation and you have disturbed me,” said the hobo, “as a punishment I am sending you back to the police academy.”

He had to room with the fat guy.


***


Two policeman were walking the beat when they spotted a blind man jaywalking.

The first officer pulled out his gun and shot the blind man dead.

The second officer asked, "What do you want on your pizza?"



***



A short police officer walked into a coffee shop.

“I’ll have a large coffee.”

The girl behind the counter tossed the coffee at him, scalding his face and burning his eyeballs.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, as he howled in agony, “did you want that in a cup?”




***


A police officer was chasing a criminal. “Slow down, criminal!” shouted the police officer, “Give me a chance to apprehend you!”

The criminal got off his unicycle and proceeded on foot. Did I mention the police officer and the criminal were cousins?

They weren’t.


***


Some guy ran up to a police officer.

“There’s a bank robbery in progress on South Avenue!”

The police officer shot him dead.

I think his parents were killed by bankers or something like that.




Two police officers were fighting a fire.

The first police officer said, “Bill, I don’t think I love my wife anymore.”

“Convenience,” said the second police officer, “because I have been having sex with your wife for the last seventeen years.”

Her name was Barbara.


***


A police officer was questioning a sex prostitute.

“So where did you go after you had sex with the man in exchange for money?”

“I went directly home,” said the prostitute.

“I have tricked you into a confession,” said the police officer, “and you are now under arrest.”

“Entrapment,” said the prostitute, “let’s split the difference and go to Red Lobster.”

They had the shrimp scampi.


*** 

The Easter Bunny went into a bar and ordered a dry martini.

“And I mean dry,” he said, grabbing the bartender by his shirt, “or I will shatter the glass in your face and force you to drink from the toilet.”

Whoops, this was supposed to go in Easter Bunny Stories.


***


A teenager ran up to a police officer.

“Some lunatic is throwing acid in people’s faces!”

The police officer shot the teenager dead.

“It is my way or the interstate,” he said to no one in particular.

***



Two police officers were on the street when a man came out of the liquor store holding a gun and a sack of cash.

“I robbed the liquor store!” said the crazed robber, “and I shot the owner of the liquor store in the face!”

“That’s nice,” said the first police officer.

“Have fun,” said the second police officer.

Their shift ended fifteen minutes ago.

***


A female police officer was walking her beat when she noticed two Mexican teens trying to steal a car.

“Freeze!” she said, drawing her gun, “I am a police!”

“She is a police,” said the first Mexican boy, “we had better surrender!”

“She cannot be a police,” said the second Mexican boy, “she is a woman!”



They compromised by squeezing her breasts until the real police arrived.


***


A police officer pulled over a woman driving 173 miles an hour.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he said, standing at her window.

“Because you are a big jerk with authority issues and you need to use a gun as a substitute for your non-functioning penis?” she asked.

The police officer pulled out his 9mm Glock pistol and shot the woman dead.

He hated it when bitches were right.





The Unscrupulous Al Dunbar



Uptown the city streets are rainbow and they play their own music. It leaks out the jazz clubs and cafes, spills across the sidewalks and drips over the curbs. It pools in the cracks of the pavement and permeates, awakening the muscular grooves huddle under the surface cement. It is deep soul burrow underground: low electric bass from long thunder fingers, a walking line, backbeat divine, an open strut, jaywalk in broad daylight. The music unpeels from brass shining bright: lush horns splitting the day from night, the good from the easy, bouncing round concrete corners of the city, echo up the alleyways, resonating warm and lush.

The music was always there, sweeter than Saturday night, make the people gravitate, radiate, wake up the day and take the evening deep. It was evident especially now at the sundown: you could hear the soul vocals blowing in the breeze, in every sigh, rising high, dissolving into the blood orange, cotton pink, and grape purple of the sky. In a club an alto saxophone takes a solo, stand up to speak his mind, moaning testimony up the avenue true in clear spiral streams of aural persuasion. Everybody in the city making their way, moving to the music, in five-part harmony, honest and alive, free and more than easy beneath a smiling April twilight. For a minute the world was wrapped up right.

Then Al Dunbar had to come along and fuck everything up.

Al Dunbar came pounding down the boulevard in his purple sirloin coat jacket, his gold-tip cane in vice grip, feather taking flight in his two-tone hat. He wore a lowercase scowl held bracket by his black goatee trimmed immaculate to style. His bad mood was boiling over, out into the neighborhood, his pace changing the tempo of the town, parking meters losing time, traffic lights blinking out of sequence, subway trains stalling on the tracks. Al Dunbar walking with his nostrils wide, his tongue tied in a knot, his leopard skin shoes crashing cymbals on the crosswalk.

Al spotted Mrs. Berry coming the other way. She was his Mother's friend, from long ago, drinking him Kool-Aid and eating him cheesesteaks when he was a kid. He remembered her. She would sit with Al's mother for hours smoking cigarettes, commiserating about men and the quality of government cheese. Now she was old and prune wrinkle, in a bad wig, limping down the street with a bag of groceries from the market. She spotted Al, made the face to say hi, and on an impulse he hooked her right ankle with his cane, yanking as hard as he could.

Mrs. Berry tip back like a good bottle of beer, going airborne complete before crunching the sidewalk & shattering her spine, paralyzing the lady for life.

She cried out in a minor key as her groceries spilled, and as a rogue orange rolled after Al he helped himself to a smile. He walked on, couldn't miss a beat: he had business.

Jelly, one of the neighborhood girls, had been in his car while he was at the barbershop yesterday. But she wasn’t alone: she had brought her sister. And while the barber had buzzed Al's sideburns to symmetric that chicken-head Jelly and her sisters had decided Al's car was a good place to eat their ham sandwiches. Except Al had only one rule: you don’t eat in his car.

You don’t eat in Al’s car.

1961 Cadillac Coupe. Vintage. A clean machine, restored & adored, a prize ride on vulcanized rubber… Al's Coupe was white bright with shark fins to prowl the waters and slice you in two, a plush pink interior that made every woman giggle when they touched it and every man say “Fuck.” The grille was a wide smile in sneer, all teeth beaming menace in gleam. The lower skegs were sharpened spikes, ready to puncture the kneecaps of anyone who stood too close or tried to peek down the tinted windows. Al's Coupe was more than a car: it was an ideal on wheels, his crowning glory, a perfect mesh of machinery and bloom.

It took Al Dunbar four years and dollars uncounted to restore the vehicle… everyone in town knew it was his, and everyone let him park where he wanted to: double, triple... sometimes he pulled in horizontal and took up four spaces- two handicap. The Coupe made all the tough guys stand up straight. Most of the time the car was on the boulevard under the overpass, bouncing, while another neighborhood girl sat in Al's lap and thanked him repeatedly for preserving the legacy of General Motors. Other days it was thick with the fog of sweet white smoke while Al & his pals smoked the deep purple from hollow blunts… head in the clouds, riding on air, cruising on the dream…

But today was a today for justice. Today was a day for payback. Jelly needed to learn what happens when you use the Al's Coupe like a picnic bench. Al had pulled up the crumbs from the backseat upholstery with his own manicured hands, almost split his skull wide, tiny flecks of ham and flakes of bread all over the backseat: under the mats, between the head rests, and the man at the car wash had swallowed hard and took off his cap, “I’m pretty sure I can get out the grease stains.”

Al got the call this morning from Randy Butler that it was Jelly who fouled the car- she was fucked up, out of control, eating ham sandwiches like they were going out on vinyl. Randy said she had red eyes when he saw her run out the deli, brown bags and potato chips and beading bottles of Mountain Dew. Randy said he saw Jelly laughing with her sister and  the two of them had ducked in the car to eat up out of the sunshine. Randy said he watched them do it. Randy said they didn’t even have any napkins.

“But you didn't hear it from me.”

Al knew she needed a beating: a good romantic pulp to set her back on the right way, remind her that he owned this town and no treats his car like a barnyard. A hospital job would be good, maybe break her leg... some time in a cast might make her think twice about her table manners. The girl was a nitwit, alway one ring shy of a circus but now… now she needed correction.

As he walked Al Dunbar was thinking of other things. That bootleg concert he had to dupe to cassette and get onto the street. The five grand he owed Chimney from the football games. And he thought of the Manhattan Wrap.

The Manhattan Wrap was serious business. And it was an original, Pizza Palace was the only place you could get one. Dice-chicken, tomato, lettuce and special sauce in a wrap with fries. Fries in the wrap- he loved that. Then you got seasoned fries on the side and an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. He was starving... he could taste the hot grease. Al lick his lips and check his watch. He would still have time for a Manhattan wrap, if he beat Jelly fast, no small talk or conversation. He could smell the nuggets frying, taste the sugar of the soda sweet. His pupils dilate, blood sugar go low. Gotta make this fast.

Up the stairs to Jelly's place, walls filthy with the wallpaper slick and slithery. The place made him sick. He climb up to the second floor, could hear the TV from the hallway, knew it had to be from her apartment. It sounded like some junk talk show where the audience could scream and holler at the guests and pretend to be outraged. Al come to the grimy door, knocked and waited, and eventually Jelly’s five year old boy opened up, naked except for his yellow underpants. Al had forgotten the kid’s name: he handed the boy a toffee from his coat pocket and stepped inside.

The place was a wreck: Al could smell the toilet room and expired food. There was garbage on the floor... it covered up some of the cigarette burns pockmarking the carpet. The people on TV got righteous with the microphone.

Jelly's little boy bit into the toffee and wordlessly wandered back to TV. Al asked, “Where your Mother, son?”

The boy pointed.

Jelly, in her bathrobe, at the kitchen table, sound asleep next to her pipe. A bruised apple sit on the table next to her- on the verge of going rotten- next to a puddle of saliva from her open mouth. Jelly was out cold. Her filthy robe was open wide and exposing her breast, her hair knotted gnarly with her eyelids making flutter. She was dreaming of ham sandwiches and harder rock.

Al looked at Jelly, just some public school walkout, just some poor bitch that didn't have the sense God gave a pigeon. In that minute he wanted her dead. In that minute he hated her.

He kicked the chair out from under her, breaking off the legs, and Jelly's chicken face slide across the table before she collapsed like an empty puppet on the floor. Then her eyes open wide, blinking, trying to boot up her brain box as she rose to feet and saw Dunbar before her.

Al was at work but his mind on the Manhattan Wrap, the sound of the crackling deep fryer. “Who told you to eat in my car, you crackhead reject?”

He slapped her face, warming her up, yanking her wrists to pull her close. She shook her head. “No, godammit, no!”

Al punched her stomach, uppercut her face when she was doubled over. He felt a tooth go loose. He grabbed her neck and kicked her in the back, using the instep of his shoe so he didn't scuff the vamp. He slammed her face into the kitchen table. She stood up, shattered, a panic in tremble, blood flowing from her mouth, howl, “No! Stop! Stop it Al Dunbar!”

Al smile, sit her on the table top, one hand on her hip, the other reaching for the switchblade in his vest pocket. “The hell is wrong with you girl? Who do you think you're tangling with?”

He put the knife to her throat but Jelly slip away. He decided to carve his name into her forehead, and then he'd be on his way to taste the seasoned salt of the french fries. Al grabbed for her and only got her bathrobe, which she stepped out of as she ran. He dropped it to the floor: “Get over here.”

Jelly, naked, bloody, bent in cower behind the sofa, “No, Dunbar, no...” The tears were flowing.

Al crossed the room, grab her dirty hair in his hands and drag her across the apartment on all fours. Jelly, bleeding, eyes tearing, nose running, buck and prance like a Paso Fino.

“Now you're gonna learn what happens when you fuck with Al Dunbar.”

That was when Jelly's kid plunged the knife into Al Dunbar's round belly, invasion off schedule.

Al stopped and looked down at the child, curious, and the boy looked back at him- no fear, no anger, just the understanding of what had to be done.

The kid, fresh bold, kept his eyes locked with Dunbar's as he moved the knife northwest jagged up Al's belly, severing coiled bowel, slicing pancreas like sweet potato pie. The steak knife stake its claim in the deepest of Dunbar’s gut, just enough air left for Al to speak placidly the only word he ever understood: "Motherfucker."
 
But it was too late. Too late, yeah. That's the grace of nature. Even with the sun falling slow and the crocus in blossom, even here in the golden hour, it was too much for medical doctors to repair. Too deep for nurses to soothe. Not even enough time left to thank God for the sunset.

Al looked down at the blood. His. Real. The knife stuck out his stomach like a comic prop, and his hand went loose, letting go of Jelly's hair. She stand up and grab her boy.

Al took a step to walk- somewhere- but saw he wasn't going far. Maybe there was no place to go now. This was happening. In a moment he felt the cold that would be taking him home, and he realized then that's what death was. The cold. All the cold and nothing else.

'I came out of a warm wet hole and I'm not going back'

Who said that? He smiled watermelon wide at his own stray thought and personal punchline, but you'd never get it, you're not dying, you're alive and you could never understand, couldn't comprehend...

Al sit down on the sofa, the red from his center impossible to stop, the loss of his core preposterous to deny. He looked to the TV for one last minute of entertainment but found he couldn't process anymore. He saw it, the people onscreen, all tangle up in troubles that belong to someone else. He watched the faces: brows furrowed in fury, ears closed, shouting words they didn't understand, their anger the only fingerprint they had to leave behind. They were just ants... digging tunnels mindless, lost in their own avenues and falling farther away from home. Al felt the pain but the pain no longer bothered him. It was just a nuisance, like a phone ringing in the distance... he was onto something bigger. He was absorbing the minus.

He was wondering if they would bury him in his good clothes.

Jelly was on her cell, lower lip shaking, squealing at someone she knew, asking for help in removing the body. Already planning his funeral and fearing no repercussion. Chicken-headed nitwit.

The music of the evening- organic jazz, jungle funk- played over the sounds of the city, swarmed into symphony, rose to crescendo: the percussion of the train on the tracks, the harmonica howl of the car horn, the ride and crash of the bus exhale hydraulic, the applause of the people, the clapping of the feet. He was gonna miss the music. And as Al Dunbar lay there bleeding to death, missing the Spring, the city at night, the music that is life, his last thought was of the juicy Manhattan Wrap.

And he licked his lips.


Tough Lunches of the 21st Century (Blackmail)



Date: August 11, 2008
Location: My house

This was the lunch in which my two sons Squeemy & Ellis informed me that they wanted seventy-five thousand dollars in small unmarked bills or they would let “those” photographs go public.

I knew which photographs they meant.

I pled for some type of leniency as they ate their grilled salami sandwiches & microwave fish sticks, but the boys had made up their mind and refused to negotiate. I paid them off but I got even: I sent them to bed without Fig Newtons.


Princess Copenhagen



There is a tax on gasoline. That’s what Peter reasoned. An excise tax was imposed on the purchase of fuel. Some things can be purchased without tax. There is no tax on caskets. Everyone will know this. Some items are exempt from tax: this was a tax fact Peter knew to be true. There was a flat tax on marijuana but it was bundled in the retail price. Some taxes are inconspicuous but they are present nonetheless. A tax is different than a toll. That’s what Peter knew.

This situation, the tax situation: it could never be resolved. That’s what Peter reasoned. That’s what he told himself to justify the sequence of events that had led him to this day: afraid, alone, without shave or shower, without sleep, behind the wheel of a borrowed car, in the trunk two buttery bricks of Granddaddy Purple, indica euphoria. His passenger in the front seat was a 9mm pistol, cold and coiled. Peter wasn't thinking weapons, he was pondering the tax code, listening to the music on the radio. He was wondering if he would survive the exchange. And that’s when it happened. That’s when he saw her.

He saw her, alive and for the first time, at the side of the highway, her long hair flowing down the curve of her back. He saw her turn and see him, he saw her smile, in her gown of rich purple, in her violet so deep that it grew. He forgot about the delivery. He forgot all of his fears. He looked at her and tasted the sweet as his body went numb. He didn't have to ask her name: it was Princess Copenhagen.


 *                                *                               *


A broiling day in deep Summer, and Maggie lay back on the tile to feel the sun dripping out of her skin. Sweating actual sweat, hot heat & fear and the taste of non-existence even as she opened herself to give new life. The paramedic squeezed her hand harder and told her to push.

The pain had become more intense, interrupting coherent thought, leaving Maggie in a state of only physical awareness. Her face was wound and unfurling and she pushed, could feel the baby move down towards out- the force of life half a mile away. Maggie saw the crowd gathered around her in the diner, customers in shock, their mouths tiny lines, eyes wide and alive. She could hear Nixon on the radio and had a sudden, absurd thought: every word out of that man’s mouth is a lie.

A contraction reaching a crescendo and another thunderbolt of pain. Maggie said, “Fuck.” Her four year-old daughter Tina stepped back, watching the birth of her baby brother, aware that this was alright, this was how it happened, but still in fear of the force that had taken hold of her Mother’s body and mind. The paramedic squeezed Maggie’s tiny hand. “Mommy’s okay, honey,” Maggie said, and the little girl smiled a little, but only because she was supposed to. The customers had formed a solid wall around Maggie, a wall of protection and of pride. The waitress had brought over two dozen of dishtowels to wipe up the puddles of sweat and fluid pooling on the tile floor, and just as Maggie caught her breath the paramedic told her to push again.

She did, her body on fire, her teeth clenching as she roared, outrageous ache in her skin in her bones in her soul. She knew that she was crowning, and that’s when Maggie saw her.

She was sitting at the bar on a stool, a diamond necklace around her neck. She was all alone, sipping from a strawberry milkshake. She was looking out the window, the light from behind her sublime. She swallowed and turned to look at Maggie, and in her eyes an open doorway. Maggie laughed aloud: it was Princess Copenhagen.


*                              *                               *


I was drunk on tequila and beer, too drunk to stand on my own, and I needed to take a piss. I leaned up against the wall of the hotel corridor for balance and I unzipped just in time because a minute later I was pissing on the rug, saying a prayer for the chambermaid who would find it in the morning.

How long had I been out here in the hall trying to find my way back to my room? Ten minutes? Half an hour? The numbers all looked the same, the hotel an endless maze of identical industrial carpet and light wood doors, a maze for tourists and travellers fool enough to leave home.

I came out for ice. I think. Or maybe I was going to get something to eat. My Editor will want to see pages tomorrow and I have nothing. Fuck. I have nothing.

I am nothing.

I zipped up and I suddenly had the overwhelming urge to be back in my room with my tequila and beer, to drink up and push myself even farther down, to take that goddamn laptop with the blinking blank screen and throw it off the fucking balcony.

Yes. If I get back in I will throw the goddamn thing off the balcony. I’ve been looking at the blinking blank screen for too long.

A woman stepped off the elevator and saw me, gave me foul eyes, and that's when I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I'm so fucking sorry... I’m sorry that my nipples ruined your perfect day.

The wench walked off and went into her room- one door I can rule out as not mine. I'm walking in circles, the balcony view revealing floor after floor of paralyzing hotel symmetry, an impossible mathematical constant, and the height of it makes me dizzy. I focus on the floorways and the room numbers. I turn a corner and I’m back at the beginning again. Fuck. What's the point? I can’t write anymore. I can’t do anything anymore. I can’t find my goddamn room. Not a word. Not a word from my finger in months.

I am lost and getting loster. Do they build hotels this way on purpose? If I ever find my room that laptop is dead, mark my words. I need a drink or two. Or nine. I can’t even find the piss stain to use as a landmark. I am out of control. My Editor is going to ask some interesting questions.

Let him ask.

I will throw the laptop off the balcony and drink until I’m dead or happy. I’ll just cancel the meeting tomorrow. Tell my Editor I'm sick and try to postpone it again.

Wait- is this my room? Card slides in.... and light goes green! Fuck yes. Oh, I’m never leaving this room again. The bottle of tequila on the counter makes me smile, but first there is a job to be done.

Fucking laptop at my workstation, patiently waiting, the cursor cursing my life, grinning at me in empty mirror, mocking my lack of potency. Let's see the goddamn thing smile with a smashed motherboard. Let's see you smile with broken circuits and spiderweb screen. Fuck you! I grabbed for the laptop, and that’s when I saw it. Something I had written something before I went out, something to come back to, two simple words on a page: Princess Copenhagen.

And I smiled.

And I started to cry.

Because I knew I’d be okay.


The Stand



“Who DIED? Who died and made YOU God?”

My knees, they buckle, my mouth gone cotton dry, my heart muscle making rumba in my eardrums, syncopated rhythm that give me dizzy. Get me dizzy. Me dizzy. Dizzy time now.

This is it. This is how I make my stand.

“You sit there, smug and obnoxious, you hide behind your mask and society’s values. I’M society. I AM society! There’s two of us involved in this- me and another person who isn’t me. That other person is you! YOU!!! Who gave you the power to judge me? What gives you the right to point your finger and accuse? What makes you think you’re better than me? I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you? Tell me! TELL ME!!!”

I swallowed hard.

“Your Honor.”

That was when the judge threw his gavel at me, a move the local papers would later call “unprecedented.” But I deserved it. I panicked, ran, made it as far as the jury box before the bailiff but a bullet in my left buttock cheek. (the tingles!)

I woke up here, reconsidering my legal strategy, and I guess what I’m saying is:

“Could I have more Jell-O?”