She turns to face the man’s profile. “Fuck you, ya little whinny bitch! I can treat ya however the hell I fuckin wanna.”
“Look,” the man says, “Ya gotta stop insultin me an buy me a pack of cigarettes or I’m not gonna help ya.”
The couple is seated directly in front of me in this crowded ball park. The woman, well past her used-by date, can’t pass for attractive even by deep-woods Appalachia standards. The man could be George Clooney for all I know. His back is to me, he’s got a black hoodie on and his arms are folded across his chest.
“Go-ta-hell-ya-sonofabitch!” She says. “Ya never even fuck me anymore so what good are ya?”
“Yer drunk. You don’t really mean that,” Hoodie says.
“The hell I don’t you fuckin FAGGOT!”
Nice. Real classy.
There’s a young couple sitting next to me. With them, their grade-school kids. Both little girls. On the other side of me, a grandpa is rationing what little time he has left with his grandson. I can bet this afternoon isn’t going at all the way he envisioned it. They’ll be memories alright, just not the right ones.
“Lookit,” Hoodie says, “I gotta get up at 5 in tha mornin ta make sure you got yer paperwork and drive ya to court. All ya gotta do is tell the judge you have the report from tha doctor an he’ll dismiss tha case against yo-”
The woman is flings her purse into the row ahead of them, hitting a balding man in the back of the head.
Are you fucking kidding me?
“Don’t do me any favors, asshole.” She is laughing. The bald guy hands her purse back over his shoulder without really looking at either the man or the woman.
“You think this is funny?” Hoodie asks. “You can get 8 fuckin months in tha jail, ya stupid cunt!”
Christ, not even I would use that word in public.
The woman shrieks like a strangled cat and beats on the head of her companion.
“Stoppit!” he cries.
Leave her already, damn it!
She continues the beating, bringing her purse into the action with chopping swings.
Ok, I gotta mind my own business. As soon as I get involved they’ll both turn on me.
“Stoppit ya crazy whore!”
The bald man in front of the couple turns in his seat. “Hey! I’m tryin to-” He does not finish his sentence. Whatever he sees is is enough to prompt him to get up and leave. He’s highly motivated, leaving his jacket and his beer. The couple doesn’t seem to notice baldy and are now in rare form.
“Promise me you’ll stop abusin me,” Hoodie says, ”an buy me some cigarettes.”
“Okay, I’ll get ya some fuckin cigarettes, faggot.”
“An’ ya gotta gotta stop insultin me,” Hoodie says.
Silence.
“Promise me no more insults,” Hoodie says again.
She says,”I said I’ll get ya the fuckin cigarettes.”
The granddad and the kid get up and leave. Day ruined. I rock back and forth in my seat, and feel like I’ve just run 100 meters breathing through a straw. JESUS-FUCKING-CHRIST! Just say you’re sorry, you loopy bitch!
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Thank God!
“YOU FUCKIN FAGGOT!” She flings her cup of beer at Hoodie and the impact splashes brew and foam on the kids seated next to me.
Fuck this!
I say, “Look, you low-class trailer trash! Kill yourselves som-”
Hoodie stands and turns to face me. I see his hands that look like they would belong to any other white guy, and that’s where the relative sanity ends shit gets all Apocalyptic.
Inside the hoodie, Nothing.
The hood is surrounded by a reverse-halo — no clear delineation of hood and the area around it, absorbing light and twisting the very fabric of space-time into it like the event horizon of a black hole. Except there’s no black hole inside the cloak — that would be…something.
The ballpark drops away, the cackling trailer-trash woman dissolves into nothingness, there is no up, down, left right, yesterday, tomorrow. There is just It and me.
My eyes travel down to the hands, both are fists. I must have blinked because in an instant, there’s a curved knife in the right hand that wasn’t there a sliver of a moment ago.
With a decade-and-a-half of Filipino blade arts training I don’t have to think, I go into auto-mode defensive-posture, angling my body and turning my palms inward to protect my veins. Except nothing happens. My legs are taking a personal day, my right arm feels like I’ve slept on it and that’s really a bitch cuz’ I’m a southpaw.
A foul breeze emanating from the void reeks of animal urine and carrion, singeing my nose hairs, curling them like a maych has been put to them. My eyes feel like they’ve been flushed out with turpentine.
Lungs burn with acrid air as if I just tried to smoke a running Hummer by the tailpipe, I remember to exhale.
That hood.
Inside, what I see is absolute, non negotiable, and zero ambiguity. What every soul that ever was has seen and every soul to come will know.
I see The End.
The breeze from the hood picks up to a gust, carrying on it a sound like two cinder-blocks scraping together. “Not yet,” it says.
As if my perspective is a movie reel with three frames cut out, It’s there and then…gone.
————————————–
I must’vebeen screaming because Amanda is standing at the foot of our bed, wild-eyed and clutching a pillow like a shield to her chest. My heart has the weight of a Buick in my chest and my throat feel like I’ve been gargling staples.
I don’t reach for the scrap paper and the nub of a pencil next to the bed. I got a head-full of fucked-up dreams I transcribe almost nightly. Never. Never has one been so… visceral. No pencil needed. I will not forget.
Happy fucking birthday. Again.
Tagged: Dream
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2 Comments
LOL. I think it just means you’re afraid of white people.
Well done.
My legs are taking a personal day.
Classic. I can relate.