What Marvin didn't realize

Where was the incident occuring where the blood dripped in the wrong direction. It was defiance of gravity, and the disobendience to a higher power frightened Marvin. He was scared, enraged by the life he had been leading. Enjoying fewing things, he devoted most of his cold heart to the sonds of gongs. His house was filled with them. A careful pathway had been cut through the apartment to make room for his peculiar collection.

He would purchase them at auctions with a rapacious hunger. The opponents around him felt they had no choice when he bet. His foul language and unkempt manner was protected by what everyone enuciated with fear, the handicap. Marvin took a certain relish the word. It did not bother him, but rather amused him in the way the people around him tried to make themselves feel safer by making names so safe. The way people called dead bruised and battered baby cow into a nice cut of veal. You could ignore the viscera that sprays everywhere when they fled them. Marvin of course had taken years to have developed the skills to imagine. How could he possibly see things when the use of his eyes had conformed to permanent darkness?

The vibrations are what helped him. His many drumsticks were nearly worn away. The method took an impossibly long time. To Marvin, it seemed short. He had spent his entire life frustrated, what was a little more pain for such an incredible award. One that would make everything perfect, different and loving.

The first gong was small, a brassy touch and smell. This particular one being purchased in nepal. The wood had the residue of hashish, the religious variety. The first vibration was young and small. It usually took thirty seconds for Marvin to be caught in the pulses of the metal disc. For other people who would stop by, it would take them longer, for Marvin capabilities of sense were very heightened since one had been taken away. An extreme way to try and make amends.  However, he was still fearful. He proposed that the noises were first an impulse. A support system that he had designed by the grace of a higher force.

Marvin was being tested. However the new things he would discover with his vision would shock him, appall him into retching his lunch across the counter of a pricey restaurant in a town with tall buildings. Silver Spires filled with those who never suffered so decided to design there own. Trying to be comfortable with a sense of entitlement after being ridiculed by simply being stuck in a cubicle during the daylight hours.

The following gongs increased in circumference. Marvin began to feel strange. He would wake up and feel something intense and raw. When he blinked and looked into the milky maw of nothing, something began to happen. What was the color. It reminded him of the cold touch of metal. It danced inside the fragments of what could have been the ability to look beyond the tips of his fingers. He went and put on music. As it played the lines appearing in his eyes starting to move around. What was this? Everything had begun to show it's own vibration. As if to show them that the thousand ignored objects were also in plain sight of sight.

The fences in the front of the yard would greet him in the morning. The handle of his skin twisting like a snake as he slowly ambled to work. The way his co worker was in the wrong place when he walked into the office.

Gary, was on the ceiling, typing on his laptop computer. He drank the coffee, which clung to the inside of his cup. The brim of the mug smiling with a mouth filled with hot coffee. He began talking and the coughed lightly. Blood began to trickle out of his nose and dropped down onto the floor. Why was the blood only following the laws of psychics?

It was strange, Marvin tried to cover his ears, but once you open the invitation to temptation it is only fair to accept the consequence. What Marvin did then was shut off yet another part of his heart, when perhaps he had been missing one last instrument.

DJ MENACING NATURE IN THE HOUSE

CALLING ALL NJ LADIES!!!!!

This coming Friday, one weekend only, experience the club experience you thought was only in your dreams. Well take that dream and capture it in a sick Ed Hardy hat, pour in a combination of Audieger's sexcellent MEN'S COLOGNE & Sport's drink. That is how sick this concert will be. You will be able to keep your blow out sexified as all of our facilities and corners are stocked with the latest axe products and sweet alcohol filled face drying designer cosmetics that you would find on clearance at DAFFYS!!!!! (HORN HONK HORN HONK)

The night will start off with DJ dropbackparkituptogetdown,

He will spin his classic #1 hit, I got a Hewlett Packard in heaven. After playing that song at increasing volumes sixty four times straight, we guarantee that your ears will literally be spewing blood and maybe a few chunks of gray matter. It will be painfully awesome, try it with a red bull and ciroc vodka splash! Oh you got that right! It is going to be really really hot in the room. Proper ventilation and adhering to fire codes is gay. We threw that pussy nonsense right out the rational window, We decided to put giant steam and fog machines! What is not being able to see your own hands and suffering a claustrophobic episode resulting in seizure. But to make sure that it is warm enough to rock your very own Kohl's Sweatshop guaranteed tank top. You can rock any religious memorabilia you have around your neck to pay homage to a myriad of saints and virgin Marys. FUCK!


Did we mention romance? Well all you trashy gurls and buyz (Our apologies!), look no further. The girls will be able to express their interests by competing for the number one spot in a w-tshirt contest followed by a bull ride in bra and then a farting contest! Gross but neat!!! The guys will be auctioned off and then sent to local organic farms to be grass fed and then fed to Connecticut. We will provide semi-to not so much-private alcoves, so that if you are inebriated enough to try and do more than make out on the dance floor, the frumpy folks will have a chance to watch you and hate you for what you are but also sort of envy your blind ignorance! It's gonna be a rager!


Hungry? Their will be plenty of food for all those feeling eager for a gnosh. We have a buffet set up featuring all premium Energy drinks. MONSTER, ROCKSTAR, 5 (7) HOUR ENERGY, BOOTY SWEAT, will all be served up in a heaping dish of jello mixed with vodka, that you can chow down on until the sunlight hits your crusted over make up and early signs of rosacea will be setting in as you head back to your 350 Z with some cutie on your arm. She may turn out to be underage or your cousin, but at least you will have a full tum tum!

DRUGS?!? We almost forgot to mention all the illegal substances you will be able to consume. If one is feeling the need for Alprazolem, Zoloft, Trazodone, Lamictal, Abilify, Diazepam, Klonopin, Adderall, Atavan, or one of the many other treats on the market, we will have a doctor writing prescriptions right on the premises! OH no, feeling pain and need to shake that sore muscle contraction disorder from the anabolic bummers? Look no further, we will have twelve MRI trucks in the parking lot. Just stuff your dome inside one of these things and then presto, in your hand will be a month supply of schedule II opiates! Hooray!

All in all, we hope you can get some time off from Abercrombie and Fitch or planning your next trip to Senor Frogs to make it to this epic and completely forgettable event. Dance the night away, Sweat enough chemicals to make DOW jealous! Punch as many people in the face as you can. We must remember life is short, so do as much ridiculous shit as you can! Put your entourage season three DVD box set down and get your ass on the dance floor!

holler.

Yoga Defector

He is my strength. His words are our gifts. I bow for him. My eyes will thirst from any piece of advice he affords me. Waiting lost like the stray of all dogs, I need his attention, to tell me I have plans, what my future is. His kingdom is built on the grand ideology of all people rise. My face barely grazes the floor as I salute his sun. His fire is heating the solar panels of my back, as I promise, and I do not know why. My skins breaks out, my stress goes nowhere, It is his perfect ideology, his malleable crony that I have become, to have others tell me that I will never be one, but deep down, the more I adapt all of his opinions, soon I will be no one, I will be everything he needs.


I needed to be there earlier than usual. Fearing about my weight, I would peddle as fast as I could. Running through green, anxious for the end of red. Colliding with metal, silver and red with my blood. A wet puddle seeping into open wounds, a ramshackle helmet. Bruises and obscenities as I throw my bike to the local repair shop to board a train. I swallow five pills, five pounds off and five thousand more brain cells screaming, no vinyassa for a hollow mind. Blood on my hands and rushing to the room, stumbling in, with olives for pupils. Brick with wood as he comes in, adorned in the casual nature of a long haired middle aged guru. Thirsty for words and a living cause for frustration, I transform under the perform of how much I can do as long as it is good for the collective.


Running away from friends, dismissing those who wanted to share hearts, and falling to every person in a mess of sweat and sunken eyes. This is a famine of independence, empathy, and self reliance. It is not his words that are the issue that makes this equation of the utmost national security, it is the willingness to be fooled because you wanted to be created in something new. The only person who can eliminate foolish fears is me but I want it to be my leader. More pills. More words. More articles and criticism. A self criticism as my usual wardrobe has grown to large for my waist. Feeling my stomach, analyzing it for any fat. Even subcutaneous fat is unwelcome, but it will be there, that is the reality of someone needing to survive. Imagine the people who are deliberately not fed to be eliminated. As a Yoga Defector I am the height of arrogance, the paragon of insecurity, the perfect loser specimen to self help gurus. I am the wet dream of the Marriot Conference room head set $500 a day Mr. Fix it and nothing can stop me. 


The downward spiral is not something that can be foreseen. Your world understands that the oceans of your tears are about to set on fire like the Cuyahoga. The artificial Juche with which you live by and close to is singing in dialects that are tongues whom the Pentocostal is afraid to utter the phrases that I will sing on the muggy streets of a city that I have created with a fetid brain. Holes grow bigger, money is spent, and I drink. I drink till the bile in my stomach cries to my fingernails and spills onto the asphalt of the street, a warm body underneath me and I am unaware. More wretch and bile, dyed hair and kiehls in the shower. We will overcome, I will destroy and die alone on the hills of the layers of skin that I have shed to milk from the unfocused eyes of those who consort with me.


Recognition. I know what is happening, dragged away from the mat and the universe that seems more enjoyable when you are on your head has revealed as much as it has taken. I am lost, and turning my own converts. Mirror masking the man who was the ultimate Anti-Hero. Play the man at his own game, hiding from him, realizing that I am the fool, he refuses to accept my Autonomy and exile begins post haste. The rest of the diplomatic team is dismissive as well, for the fallen jester does not get the laughs when the blood is real and not false. He turns his false love to false hate. Eyes that burned with ardent fervor, now burn with destructive hate. Turning to all the wrong alter egos and wandering lost it is no wonder that anger is incited all over the valley. Chet Baker no longer wants to sing to him. Wine no longer has grapes, but instead the rubbing alcohol that is his blood stream. Anyway for me to not find fault, is the Cu chi tunnels that are growing longer, more narrow, the recessive traits eviscerating the competition to be a kind person.


World travel will not stop it. Conversion will not stop it. Meditation does not do any good. Legal and Illegal drugs secretly fuck behind close doors. No matter how hard he tries, his longs collapse but won't fill with air. It is always hot and stagnant and his belly erupts with non-growing pains. You can run anywhere you want to, but their is not a light in sight. A port has closed, rusty fences block everyone from the beach, and when he tries to find someone to blame. I find the he is me, the hammer and tools in my hands for the pillbox I have created. For so long I have wanted to say I hate you to my Grand Marshal. The cure I realized, although long and hard, requires me to look in the mirror, and to see that I have not defected from Yoga but from the milk of Human kindness.

Pretentious Pornography

Curving over the edge of my bed, stricken with nausea. I remember the slope of the street. The city's sharp hills and barometric pressure creating congestion in my nose. It wasn't in the nicest area of town, why would I expect it to be anywhere else. Writhing from remembering, I reeled over onto the floor as he led me to a series of offices, abandoned by the failed dot coms. I sat in a puffy orange chair and tried to pretend I wasn't there. No confidence and certainly no self esteem, I always wanted to believe, but now I am asking and I receive, for a small price.

Naked and alone and the couch. This is a cold place in the city. You cannot wash this off of your hands, I can see this in his smile. The lack of his patience for me to become a fake and empty unit, a vessel to be filled with cliche lines and to pretend this is nothing more than smut would be a lie to the both of us. It will haunt me for the rest of my life, steering me towards the wrong direction. The actor, the humanitarian, and the scholar all fall into the paper shredder. Amateur Amateur Amateur, during my Amateur times of doing Amateur work. An expert of nothing, a lover of no one, a heart pumping with no blood but a forced ejaculation.

My mattress begins to curl around me, pressing against my ribs. I try to yell for help, but I lack the vocal chords. I reach for my medicine, but I remember that I quit so long ago. So many faces spin around as if the house is caught in a tornado of portraits. As they spin, the mariachi band begins to play. Several ingredients are called for in the end of this.

Running with stealth, trying to hold the contents of my stomach inside me, a yellow plastic container is right where I left it. Shivering and shaking, I purge on the container and all over the floor. I feel the steady cam looking nowhere near my face, one thousand instruments playing my favorite song. Stumbling up the stairs and trying to see what I do not want to see. The gaunt cheek bones, the pastry white skin, and the shivering mess that is someone when they no longer even trust themselves. Reaching out the last of the gumption in my being to fight the greatest enemy any of us has ever known.

I salute to the queen, and bless the sages of whom have been very helpful these past few months. They provide a illusory curtsey and join the wallpaper again. The empty bedroom of my family groans in the cobwebs and the wind that New England tends to have around the months. As spring ushers out the new plants, I grab a couple in my hands from outside the window, hoping tendrils will fly out of my wrist and joining the earth I will bear fruit and do at least one of the goals I had when I was here.

Dearly departed, we are gathered here to say goodbye, says the worn out stuffed Monkey. The polar bear without a nose lowers his face to let me know he will miss me. A vine wraps around my ankle from the window in my bedroom, and tries to pull me outside. Fool's games. Childish games for those younger than children. Simply a shoestring, tied by myself to my own ankle. Tired of being the living liar, lying back down on the bed.

Empyting the canister, feeling wet and dry of skin. I close my eyes and it begins to spin again. Oh the things we do for friendship, the things we do for money. Dearly departed, what was wrong with you? You give up on everything, what happened to the spark? Surely you need one now, and you are reluctant to look for it. I see my face, dark circles around my eyes and a tear to fall down. I roll onto my stomach.

The wood from the floor ruptures massive arms grab me and as I fly towards the concrete, I wonder, suppose that shoestring could have pulled me out of the window, then what?

Rock Candy

 The arms do not lengthen the same way as ours. Whispers do not evoke Paranoia in the average soul. Narcissus cannot find a pool in which to see his reflection. All this time and the ocean seems more devoid of fish. It has been twelve days since the first speck of paint chipped off the side of the hull.

Fan the fingers up as you inhale, oxygen hitting you in the back of the throat. A diaphragm playing balloon inside of the body. Think thick coats of Blue unprovoked by gravity. A perfect place for a seed to be planted and a root to connect with the ground. One would think? Perhaps? Perhaps not? What does ground those who are not the others? Overtime it is thick coats of sugar incorporated.

Back in 1492 or 1942 A small firm was established in an undisclosed location (Currently, The City of Quartz, California). The company had no good ideas for an innovatine project. Men and Women toiled over productivity and innovation. Something fantastic! Something Wonderful! Only describable as divine! The smartest and most wicked of them all beheld a rock. When he picked it up in the park, no one seemed to give him a second glance. This park did not own the rock, The people certainly didn't have a stake in the composition of merging minerals. He picked it up and rubbed the rough and smooth. They would not have to pay a cent for the actual product.

Late in the evening, The Smartest and the Wicked went back to the park, there he filled a burlap sack with the stones of various sizes. He would have to drag them back to the company. As he pulled, he noticed his girth being unhelpful with the movement of stones. Each time he pulled, he felt a small hardened poke underneath his skin. Stopping only once, because time still has yet to be controlled, he felt around and realized his body was providing him with muscles.

As he arrived just as everyone was getting to work, the beheld the most beautiful man they had ever seen. The women and the men fell in love with him. His every curve and lineation glistened to the hot yellow burn. Inside he took his seat at the front, a prediction of those that sat underneath and the to right of the water cooler.

Outstretching a paw, a rock bedazzled itself upon the audience. They smiled, laughed, and cried all wondering what the right response could be. A bowl of a hot sticky liquid pranced upon the table. Drip drop drip drop, the rock came dressed in a thick coat of sugar. Air kissed Sugar. Turns out that Sugar was frigid to air. They never spoke again. The rock now looked like a delicious candy, with a promise of a surprise every time!

He handed one to each and every one of his colleagues. They bit into the sugar, delighted. On the second bite, nerve endings split through the teeth as daffodils. Many screamed and quivered to the unrelenting pain. Palming one lady's head in the fingers of the muscle man, he pointed her eyes towards the box, opened on the top and currently occupying his other hand as he dropped more candy inside.

"A surprise every time? Perhaps this next one will be different!,"

Each time she popped another rock into her mouth, now gushing with the rouge juice that tastes like rust, a laugh developed in her demolished maw. She loved the product! It was a success. With each bite, the uncertainty was so compelling, even though the result proved the same.

Rich in no time and meaner and more enjoyable. Wine was drunk. Love was made. Tickets were handed out and never paid. Everyone walked around rubbing their jaw. Hoping that maybe one of these bites would reveal the answers to their pain. So bite and bite they did.

However, where we are at sea, never have our eyes laid upon sweet. Salt is the taste engrained in our hearts. Deep down at the bottom of the sea, large fallen rocks covered in black plants. Fish swim among them, the last of their kind. Hiding from greed and safe but not on land. The entire world has tasted demand and the gut of the issue. Whales swim around to dismiss the great beast. Muscle firm and parting the seas. The rock can only be helped if sugar is only remembered by name.

A road between two.

I remember how much I used to think about you. In the town where I was young, a winding road between two swamps. Each time the weight of the vehicle pushed to the right and I asked and received the most delightful visions of you in my head. You smiled at me as you reached for my hand. When our fingers interlocked I would tell you,

"I want to be good,"

You would smile and disappear as quickly as you touched me. Now I am anxious for that memory. Someone has tough callused hands around my ankle. A bag is over my head. Nothing is visible and I am so scared of what is about to happen. Who used to pull on my ankles? A teacher once did that with such love, I assumed she was my wife, if I ever knew what a wife was.

These hands are different, they do not like me, they want to hurt me. Other pairs exist in this room. I understand why they want to do this, it makes sense, it doesn't mean that I do not want to run away. The sock shoved in my mouth is making my jaw ache. Bitter fetid tears are falling from my eyes and my nose can smell the iron of my blood mixing in between the muffled sobs.

Ushered and placed in a chair, leather straps go around my forearm. The hat is pulled from my head and I am staring into eyes that see this everyday. I sputter as they rip the tape and then pull the sock out. No words come out, as I make a face, trying to feign confidence. There was that road. Where was that road? Does anyone know the way to go home? What happens when they do this to us? Crying, I bow my head and I feel the initial pressure of the clamp on my pointer finger. The tear is so shocking, like the north sea on family vacations, feeling like I should smile, instead I say,

"Forgive me, Forgive me, FORgive me, FORgive ME,"

A piece of paper has words written on it. Words were meant to be read, but read aloud? I do what they say, it sounds as foreign as Mandarin but I am speaking my native tongue. How many people are going through the same exact moment right now? How many would try and reach back to the time they were young and they felt the soft skin and all the impending mistakes of being on this world for two decades. Remember the sharkskin paper of books being carried to be a productive member of what? A club? A lie? A reason to hate, no one to say good morning to.

As my head is bowed, like Mishima on the day of his reckoning, except I have no one who loves me. People will never be given the grisly, instead a rehashed story that grown ups tell other grown ups when they can't face their own conscience. Granted no last meal, I cannot see the road between the two swamps and I know why.

We have a choice, even if it isn't between life and death.

The Man with no Muscles

I do not use a single muscle in my body. Suffering from hypersensitivity, everything makes me upset, my heart pounds when I see a commercial that indicates the slightest trace of human emotion. Before my father would let in to me, he told me this was called the weak disease. The only way to end it, was to force it out, with fists, belts, suspenders, baseball bats, cheap beer bottles, and once my mother's shoe. My mother had the weak disease too. Every night while I suffered from my affliction, My father, the self proclaimed medicine man, would pummel her till her cries became as silent as the day the door closed and my mother disappeared forever. 

My mother must have been rehabilitated. I had to stay, until my father told me it was okay. Red liquid, the toxins of my body would pour from every orifice as he left me to sit in the living room. After all, even doctors need their rest. Psychotherapy was also important. I had mantras to live by:

I am pathetic. I am a weak minded. I deserve everything that happens to me. How can I be strong? How can I be better? I will change. I will change.

I needed to be bigger. The local swimming pool was usually off limits, but submission, I was slowly learning was unacceptable. I jumped in the pool. I thrashed my body, how could my soft bones and peach weak skin move from one side to the other. Once before this, I had been in water, an ocean filled with needles, people and their friends laughing at me, as I swallowed brackish water, pretending not to notice that I was sobbing, waiting for someone to help me. No one did, for they knew to touch the untouchable will be a gravely ill mistake. I wandered around exhausted until wrapping my arms around the pole of an abandoned harbor, looking at metal and steel. The ocean butterfly out of the chrysalis and into a hot hurting city of immeasurable pain.

I have six lanes to my lonesome. I pulse and swim, a new part of me awakens, and the kaleidoscope of colors are bursting at me. Sucking the water, the bromine fills out until my lungs are soggy. I drain the pool and hold the water, a massive tank of urine, bacteria killing, and lost goggles. Heaving and sagging down the streets, an orb, the boy with no muscles, the child with no heart, the beat that sags to silence. He waits for me in his chair. The weak disease is gone, instead of beating it out of me, I fill it up in one balloon and wait for it to pop. His eyes cannot mask the surprise he has for me, the maw of being victim and victor. Spilling his warm beer he stifles back and prepares, but nothing can prepare anyone for a flood. No higher ground, we live on the top floor. 

Spewing forth, my teeth rip from my guns, The water that has mixed with my stomach acids fly in his directions pushing his back against the wall. Sacrum, Lumbar, Thoracic, Cervical, all slowly being pulled North, South, East, and West. His eyes bulge and he is torn limb from limb. When it is all over, I go into my room. Soaking wet and cold. Shivering I find the beautiful cardboard wings my mother gave me as a child. If she has gone anywhere, I know it is up, into a sky where things are better, where love exists an I won't cry anymore.

On the roof, I hear noises, that ever present heat begin to itch at my skin, perhaps a relapse? Perhaps not. I walk to the edge and I fly so high, but first I must swim. The girt, the water, but finally I use my muscles. It hurts but I am not weak anymore.

Ayurvedic City & Atlantic Medicine

Gabriel stepped out of a wounded Lincoln with three other humans in tow. He hadn't expected for Simon to come through with this whole weekend. The two had spent most of their lifes desperately short of funds and now his friend, following in the footsteps of F. Scott Fitzgerald had found money that he now wanted to squander on friends and other people that he had paid to be there.

 Simon never told Gabriel how he had made his money, but when a phone call was made with such enthusiasm how can you question friendship and good fortune, at least one of them had made it out of the slump and there was nothing wrong in enjoying the spoils of new found wealth. Acting foolish was something they had always done and eventually it had helped them to hit payola. The city of built out of Trump and burning money was a little Vegas with more ill repute. Each back alley was filled with more business transactions. A hotel room was the NYSE for a multitude of tastes, pleasure and pain, if there was a difference as Simon said. Not to far away from this gambling delight lived Gabriel, the best friend and the small renter from an apartment just in Croton Falls, close to a nice Indian restaurant that he would eat at on Sunday, the only time he could afford the Sunday lunch.

The Limo had arrived and he had spent thirty minutes passing for it to arrive. It was one of the new models and there was a small scratch on the door, as if someone had dug several keys into it as they were going to pick up some valeted cars and this hulk was blocking the exit. Once inside Gabriel was greeted by three women. One of them handed him a glass of Champagne, on cue. It was all too well rehearsed and Gabriel reached in his pocket for his medication but realized in his fluster he had forgotten it. Draining the Champagne he felt uncomfortable as the script indicated that the two women needed to sit next to him. They chatted him up, a glaze in their eyes, and the third Young woman on the other side, soon slid down the leather as the car was safely on the thruway and opened a silver box with the powder that everyone knew was white. He was offered a bump off of her finger nail and he did not refuse. She smiled at him, and Gabriel could feel a bitter baking chocolate taste on the tip of his tougne when she snaked back to the other side of the ride. He finally had the twenty minute adrenal secretion to ask them their names:

Alena

Alena & Alena.

Alena, in the black cocktail dress, was Simon's girlfriend. She told Gabriel to enjoy the ride and that Simon couldn't make the ride because he was preparing everything at the hotel. "Which hotel?" Gabriel asked. She smiled, "Simon's," and then sealed her lips for the duration of the ride. The girls were pressed upon from Alena to ask Gabriel questions about his life, about his love of Jai Alai, and the trips he had taken around the world before he hit financial rock bottom and had exhausted the insurance money he had collected from various incidents and tragedies.

The white Limo, spat Gabriel and the Alena's at the door. The two embraced him and hurried inside. Simon met Alena with a kiss and then looked at Gabriel, he smiled and then firmly embraced him. The showering of compliments came from every angle of the building. It was a massive black obelisk type building with minimalist furniture. The Trump plaza and Caesars looked rather gaudy in comparison with this hotel and all of the employees in Saris and he noticed that almost every employee aside from the security were women. Each one of their name tags read Alena. Gabriel whispered into the ear of his friend, "What is the Alena thing all about?" Simon shrugged as he ushered him along and then announced before they stepped inside an elevator, "Everything is a Garden maze."

The elevator turned pitch black and it rose to the top floor of the hotel, Simon's new residence. When they all walked in the Champagne was chilling in a bucket and of course on the table were assortments of party enhancers, expensive appetizers, and then a strange suitcase that was stacked as if it could hold one thousand greeting cards.

Simon ushered for him to take a seat, and Gabriel felt a slight envy.

"Have you ever heard of the Indian province of Kerala?" Simon asked.

Gabriel shook his head.

"Well, I spent some time there, they have medicines and massages. I had these treatments everyday and it completely changed my perspective on everything. For so long you and I have been ambling fighting to have control and yet we have no control, have some Champagne," He ushered for Gabriel to pick up his flute and nearly poured to the brim.

" I know this all seems a little out of the ordinary, but to be honest I was heartbroken to see that you are not really doing anything to help yourself my friend, that is why I called you hear tonight, so hard to find you, let us relax before we do anything tonight."

With that Simon stood and extended his hand that was smooth to the touch and matched the tan neckline which Gabriel imagined went all the way down to his paunch. They walked together back to the elevator and went down two levels to what appeared to be a Spa with no names. Inside women all wearing the same name tags as downstairs handed the men two clothes to wrap around their bodies. Gabriel was led into a separate room and led to a table. It was a hard wooden table but felt good on his back. In silence and with pinched smiled a small Golden bowl with a small anteater's spout was placed just above his forehead. Droplets of hot oil began to pour on his head and the heat began to soak away the lines that had grown with each passing year of his life.

Gabriel drifted away and felt conundrums building up in his thoughts as simultaneously as he was relaxing he kept picturing a man inside his mind. They were in a room and there were candles. It seemed peaceful, a place where he once felt happy and refreshed but above that healthy. However a heavy hand came with the long haired man. He would scream at Gabriel, he would tell him to come into his final resting pose. The room would fill with headless people and no matter what Gabriel could never keep up with the rest of the group. "Move at your own pace except for you Gabriel."

A soft voice from one of the Alenas told him that a soft cloth would be placed over his eyes to remove the oil and then he would receive a massage from two masseurs, each specializing on a different part of his body. They ran taut fingers, borrowing into the muscle, a slight sting then intoxicating relaxation. He wondered where Simon had gone? Then forgot when he felt a cramp in his thigh. Cramp to pain. Pain to push. Push to poke. Poke to tear.

His skin tore, bits of sick collected at the back of his teeth, vomiting from the pain as the pale epidermis covering his thighs tore and he saw thick malbec blood stream into a viscous coat and fingers began to press their way into his view. In shock the pain seemed as distant as reaching Nirvana and he watched as the hands split and tore at the fascia as heads began to appear. The hair on his right legs was a dark brown and that of a mans. On his left leg the hair was cut short and felt softer as it revealed the head of a young woman. The two began to free themselves from the viscera and look at him with indifference. They were speaking to each other in a language that only seemed barely audible. Fingers pointing at Gabriel as they didn't bother to towel off his blood. None of the masseurs came back in and he lost his ability to speak. Sporadically they would turn their heads towards him and then away. He tried to cry when the walked close to him. They produced bags. One had a blue powder in it and the other held a ball of clay. The man molded the clay into a cube like mass and the woman poured the powder over it, a thick indigo color. The put it in front of Gabriel's face as he coughed when the powder hit the side of his cheek. The man looked into his eyes and mumbled through the thick clouds of acrid smoke. "Your name is Berkeley Brick Lane Bypass Boğaz, do you understand?" Out of fear the nameless legless person on the table nodded as the two began to dance around him and he watched as his belly expanded and the two walked out of the room and shut the door.

The nameless legless person pulled himself off the table and dragged his tattered appendages down the hall were he hoped Simon would come to his rescue. Simon was standing outside the door laughing with the Woman and the Man, "No I assure you, I have it all from here, he just needs a good shower and he won't pose a problem," He said this whilst making direct eye contact with the nameless legless man that had a name that was fading from all of our memories. Simon picked up Berkeley and dragged him into an onyx room and he looked above to find a shower head the size of the entire room. "Have you ever had a steam bath with lemongrass and Artesian water?" Berkeley shook his head. The water and the steam began to pour in. "Your friends certainly are displeased with you, I do not like the name they gave you, and although I am just as begrudged by you I am not a fan of the name they gave you," He turned in deep consternation as the water poured all around him and the new nameless legless man began to see his legs take shape again. He watched as pinks, greys, and reds began to spindle together and his skin began to form at the points of exit. Simon was moving all around the shower clasping two Champagne bottles as he continued on his thought process,

"My name is Simon, you should have a name that starts with an S," He continued, "Yes, I know, perhaps Sour, that would be fitting don't you think?"

He leaned into the newly named Sour and brought his face up against the befuddled and confused. Sour began to cry and nodded his head, beyond acceptance of the paranormal, the pain was fading away and he knew how much this was supposed to hurt but he felt nothing at all. Simon continued to dance as two Alenas walked into the room and helped Sour to his feet. They led him down a long hall to a room with no windows. It was obviously late and he saw a pair of jeans neatly folded and a sweater. He put them on and the door opened to reveal another Alena. She ushered him out and onto an elevator. 

At the bottom they were in the lobby again and she handed him a small bag with a tiny plant inside it. She showed him outside to the long limo. "Have a nice evening sir, and remember I made those scratches on the door,"

The car peeled away and Sour passed out.

When he arrived home he could see the dawn breaking. Sour got out of the car and it peeled out back onto the road and he was left to his own devices. He walked up to his door. A beautiful envelope was pasted to the door. He opened it to the smell of Lavender oil that had been sprinkled on the unread note. As he unfolded it, it read : 

BOOM.

Sour did not know which Idea was better, to run or to remain where he was.

Dotted on the Dashboard

Steven always had his way to telling the truth if not with slight embellishments and positivie additions to make the people he talked to feel better about themselves and the oftten desperate situations they found themselves in.


He once sat on a train and spent the entire trip talking to an elderlry Woman whose son had died in an awful car accident while inebriated taking the lives of three of his friends. Although the death was a cause of over indulgence and impatiences Steven tried to steer clear of  letting the woman concentrate on that painful revelation that her son has essentially increased his chance of death exponentially the moment he turned the keys and started the ignition. He imagined the cold icy street must have made the bodies more easy to look at for the Police Officers on the seen, frozen and not rotting as if they had been driving through the woods of the bayou. Steven hated to indulge those what ifs and realized that geograhphic location did not make up for losses. He like everyone else on the planet had felt the awful hunger pangs of loneliness and betrayal. Steven though rarely ever tried to tell massive lies and was usually quite good and treating his fellow man with kindness.


Several days  into the new year something unusual happened to Steven as he rode on another train and came close to his destination. It was up north and snow lay atop of the other greys and hazy blues that tended to float up in the frigid winter sky and lightless buildings that were only but a few as we went towards his car.


It had barely even registered on instinct how he had gotten off the train and walked up on set of stairs crossed 10 meters above the track and then down another set of concrete stairs only to find himself just a few steps away from his vehicle when his heart stopped in a panic, in a fear of which he was not accustomed to often.


From the other side of the parking lot he saw a person naked, cold and by themselves sitting on the asphalt which must have clung to the skin like fly paper. An icicle dropped and the form across the way did not even move his head. Steven noticed because his fear had paralyzed him. He stumbled to get the car open and raced out of the parking lot. He blasted the heat and then dialed the police explaining to them that he was worried that someone with serious dissability  seemed to be nude in the parking lot. 


On this night a lot of other events that were occuring were taking the attention of the police and rightly so because they usualyy involved a victim and some for of violence whether self inflicted or provoked or un provoked.


Steven drove in circles, the thump of his heart pushing against the adam's apple. He knew the Police in this area would heed the call and check out the situation that lay back in the parking lot. Stevens plan was to make a few circles down a state road and then watch from afar how the police would handle the situation. He parked his car far rom view and took a look and watched as the police stepped outside of the car and approached the pale and nude figure. One Policeman seemed to be a bit trigger happy and had his gun drawn and he could see the police officers talking with the individual. It was hard to guage just exactly what the gender of the person was but oddly they all got back in the car and began to drive away, with their lights off, incuding their headlights. His car parked in a lot by a small bodega was next to several others which drew attention away from the car he had turned off and then ducked resting his head on the warm fabric of the passenger seat of the car as one of the Policecars stopped. The officer got out and walked straight up to his window.


Panic was an understatetment as the policeman opened the door and leaned down one knee and tapped Steven lightly on the thigh. When he looked up two police officers one a man and the other woman were both looking at him with an ambiguous stare that ran cold waters into the bloodstream of the boy who made the call.


He asked if he could help the officers and they both shook their heads. He asked them if the young person in the parking lot was okay, they both shook their heads again. "Is there something I did wrong officers?", The two uniformed individuals shook their once again. One of the officers, the man Steven thought as his fear continued to grow opened his mouth and from his left hand produced a small glass. Like a black tar or molasses it slid down his cheek and began to accumuate in the empty space of the cup which should have belonged in someones house. He would expect police officers to have something more like paper cups, in lieu of the fact that glass could be used as a weapon. The black syrup finally reached a point were you could say when and they held it out to Steven. In shock he could do very little and made no movement to take the substance from them. 


"This is not going to hurt you, but you need to accept this, so please take the glass," the Female officer said in a voice that reminded him of a warm fireplace and not the eerie situation that was occuring before his very eyes. The officers then stood up and a hand was placed on his shoulder as they both walked away.


When the Police officers neared there car they did not get back inside but continued to walk down the drark street, he immediately shut the car door and and fumbled to start the car and was thinking about breaking the speed limit by triple. His keys were gone and now staring at the hood of his car was the individual. It looked like him, nearly exactly like him only it was bleeding at the forehead and had no genitals as in a lapse from the fear because of the oddity of its nature he took his eyes off the form standing before him. It was clearly sentient, obviously intelligent, but abovce all, extremely powerful as it had convinced Police Officers that a sexless nude human like shape was of no concern to the general public in the late hours of the evening. Steven wanted to lock himself inside the car but with only his frightened emotions he did not think anything he could do would help him escapse from this nightmare. He resigned to his fate and asked the creature, "What do you want?" It looked as him and then opened a car door and sat down on the Passenger seat, clearly unused to the decaying warmth of the fabric, but not put off by it. When Steven closed his door, the creature had taken the glass and looked at the glass and allowed it to circumnavigate itself in a cyclical motion that made Steven rife with fear, panic, and hate because he had called only to help this thing and now it was causing him a great deal of anguish.


"What the fuck do you want?" Steven finally said abrasively, thinking that aggression might evoke more than chilling indifference. The creature then slowly turned his head, Steven glanced at it's face as the skin ruptured slightly into an open cut and blood began to trickle down his cheek and quietly landed on the nude thight of the creature.


"Did I do that?" The creature nodded and Steven felt strange, "I am sorry, it is just I am scared, I didn't mean to hurt you." The creature spoke for the second time, "There is no reason for you to apologize to me, you could not have known how our relation to one another," The creature said matter of factly but with a slight kindness that made the words more palatable.  "What are you?" Steven asked.


"I  am essentially you Steven, and it is  I that is in far more trouble," He continued, " You see I like the snow very much and I know that I should not have been there like that in the parking lot, I could have frightened not only you but many other people, I should have hid in the woods, I just have waited so long for this moment that when you came off the train in my excitement I felt like I was at the Cinemas, I truly do love the train when it stops, the light is intoxicatingly beautiful and the sound of the horn beckons in the arrival of people to a destination unknown, I do not even know where you are going Steven."


Steven now thought this creature was childlike and clearly some anomally and allowed himself to be calm by searching for a subject other than the creatures origin or why it was sitting in his car that had now started and was idling as warmth began to slowly seep trough the fans that were dotted around the dash. 


"What is inside that glass?"


The creautre picked it up, and looked at it,  and then answered with a smile, a rare smile that was genuine and infectious , "It is ink." The form in front of Steven then giggled and and the top of it was then too sealed in glass,


"Why do you have ink?"


"I do not have Ink. This ink belongs to you Steven and when you choose to use it the glass on the top will remain sealed so it will not spill, I hope you find it useful as it has helped me so often in the past. Steven you must excuse nad I must apologize as this all seems a little out of the ordinary but I fancy a swim and you must be exhausted."


The creature then held his hand out and Steven gave his as well. The individuals hand was ar warm as Florida and felt strong. 


"What do I do with this, ink?"


The being got out of the car and began walking away,


Steven looked up again, "Please!" he stammered on, "What do I do with this ink?"


"Steven, my heart, that is not for me to decide nor would it be right to give you any suggestions, it is yours."


With that the form who had drastically changed Steven's life in a matter of only moments dissapeared in the direction of the resevoir and Steven found his keys and drove home. When he unlocked his door and walked into his Warm apartment and looked at the glass, he felt compelled and as this sensation began to take roost inside him he drank the ink.


It was ice cold but extremely delicious and as he sat down in his kitchen to wrap his head around the evening he could have sworn he heared someone turn the page of a book.