Friday, October 31, 2003

In Memorium Pt II

The officer was as yellow as piss. He smiled as he stepped out of his car to go to Starbucks It was a glorious day outside, the sun in the sky, covered by clouds, hiding up a little man too big to be seen.

The officer smelled snow in the air, like a meth bust. The day was skeletal, thin as paper, and the sky breathed a coldness only cold could make; like a needle in humanity's arm, intravenously injected that shook a body to salt and pepper, black and white. It was a grey day, grey like an old man's elegy being spoken in a stonecold rain, acidic but dead.

The call had buzzed the officer as he had just gotten his coffee from Starbucks, hissing in his ears as he drank his coffee. He almost burned his tongue raw as he was told what had happened. A star had fallen, he was told. A young star, one that had still been gold and pristine, just like the badge he wore. Driving off, no longer happy as piss, he felt the yellow smiles drain out of him as another toilet was flushed and purged, bringing in another mess soon to taint the now clean water that was just too clear to actually happen.

Things like this were never pretty. Never.

Officer Dalton tuned on his radio, putting it on the classic rock station. Soon Queen crashed in his patrol car, the ever so familiar song playing like a gun, cold as hell, like a sigh that was actually a scream.

Momma, life had just begun...
Now I've gone and thrown it all away.

Suddenly officer Dalton wasn't steering his wheel as he drove to the old road. He was in his head, brooding over a shivering memory, a snowflake that had melted and was refreezing in the cooly feeling that had hit him after he'd gotten the news of the death.

Wide eyes and goons groaned in his head, angels that died devils, fallen angels that had been clipped of wings. A racking mallet, banged with blood, so smushed it was curved like a pelvic bone, all thin and used, personal and covered in skin. The rag doll, sitting in his chair in his room, a lost attic all banged up and grim. Sad as a tear, and dead as a clacking clanging clock. The shadows covered the deadman like maggots covering some rat. The light ate away all the dead image, all the dead tissues and things that didn't need to be seen.

He lay a shadow in his chair. His long hair wisped in knots in black, his arms hung on the chair's arms, flopped off of them, beached and whale, black as a hole. He stood one with the chair, broken with the chair.

Then officer Dalton could see his hand reaching out, pushing the switch. Light flittered in on the maggoty darkness, shaming the rag doll in his full glory. His eyes were wide and goon, like some drug user tripped past a high. Tripped past death and glory. The boy was a fragment, sad and unfinished, unfurnished.

Hair clotted the mallet, a decorative art of blood only a murderer's art could make. The boy's head shown a clear and beaten brain, the brain's demeated spaghetti panting and dried like a prune all over. He could see the chair's torso and the boy's form.

Any way the wind blows

A sudden wind racked outside, and through the window by the chair and its seater it blew and blew, curtains like clothes moving and swaying like a mother's hand nurishing a wound. The doll body fell over in the sudden gust, and officer Dalton could now see his empty smashed head, a broken and brittled rib and bone. And below the cracked head, he could see wide staring eyes, accusing eyes, spheres that screamed at him.

He shivered, almost ran, almost cried.

"Hey hey hey, it's DJ Sam here."

Snap

"DJ Sam here. It's gonna be a cold bit out taday fer sure. Supposed ta snow taday. Snow hard an long, ya know. "

DJ Sam here DJ Sam here DJ Sam here...

Officer Dalton breathed deeply, finally getting rid of the boy's wide, accusing eyes. Getting rid of the mallet and the chair and the wind and it all.

Snap snap snap snap snap

But it wouldn't go away. He could hear bones snapping, feeble white ribbons being cut and broken. He could hear the boy crying, screaming, and the mallet hollowing it all out. It wouldn't die. A fire too bright with cold, too full of weeds and heart. It wouldn't die.

Screech

Suddenly he snapped back into reality. He was veering off the road, tires screeching, car droning not to crash. He slowed down, slow and silent like a sigh. He came to a stop on the dead side of the road, letting out a long breath of air, focusing his mind on what was now, not what was.

DJ Sam jitted incessantly, finally ending as another song was put on. Led Zeppelin aired in, Dazed and Confused and as jittery as DJ Sam. Robert Plant sang like a saint, an angel in human skin.

The flesh of fallen angels

The flesh of fallen stars, of black stars

Dalton opened his glove compartment as he held one finger on his temple. Soon the nervous crack crack of Asprin could be heard, a neurotic little apostrophe to Dalton's head. Then he put the lid back on, as cautious as ever, and placed it back in his glove compartment, the metallic hing of it reverberating on his sudden headache as it closed.

Been dazed and confused so long it's not true

Dalton did an amen to that, and shifted his car back into drive, and was off, off to the circus of horrors, the petshop of death.



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