by The Consul » Mon Feb 10, 2014 5:44 pm
Uncle Horace entertained Mussolini. Un amico è come un altro noi stesso, Horace would bellow. You know who told me that? Mussolini!
He looked around the beach and saw no potato chips. Instead, there was a small, brown hemp satchel. He opened it up and there was a wad of hundred dollar bills inside, laced with sand and a pink sticky note with the word Thanks scribbled in green. He did not want this to be the end of the adventure so he stood up, reeling, and took off after her, reminding himself of the borrachos in Garibaldi Square who appeared to be so drunk, but were actually picking the pockets of the touristas.
Regaining his equilibrium, he caught up to her just as her body was enveloped by the shadow of the woman's changing room door. He looked around, there were people scattered about, facing the waves, but they all seemed like they were miles away. He looked down at the sand, wondering what to do, fighting off the messaging of the hallucinatory patterns his mind was trying to connect between everything. Then suddenly, without thinking, he spun and ran into the woman's dressing room. He was sunblind going in as he beat his arms like wings among the screams. Wet towels and bathing suits slapped his thighs and face. In a surprising attempt at propriety, he closed his eyes, as if to say no prurient intent. Orange sun glimmering down past the sea of dreams. Stars exploding as he felt a slap on his face.
Asshole!
Christmas mangers on bubbly clouds, burning hotels inside yellowed books leaking out greasy tales - who can take blame for the accident of their birth? Two hands shoved him hard and he fell back out of the doorway as if he'd been hit by a goat. Idiot! she yelled, taking the first step out of the structure by trying to land her blue sequined Manalo Blahnik boot on his crotch. Fortunately for him the pants of his white suit were far too baggy and her heel, after puncturing a hole immediately below his right testicle. became entangled in the reflex of his clamping legs.
She was on top of him now, pummeling him with her purse. A small crowd of women and girls piled out of the changing room, egging her on.
"That's it, that's it. Smash that poivoit!"
"Hit him harder! Harder!"
He was not trying to fight, but rather, his body was convulsing in laughter.
"My God," he bellowed in the cadence of guffaw, "I'm alive. I'm fucking alive!"
He saw the birds eyes above him. A feint strip of cloud skitting away from the great storm it escaped. A sparkling flash of a barely visible drone. Oh, tell me, tell me what I am doing, for I do not know.
She had become entangled in his entwining with the universe. She stopped trying to knock him out as soon as she started laughing too.
The sd card came popping up above her bra line behind her Doce Gabbana blouse where he plucked it from her with his lips.
She could smell the oils and hydrogenators oozing out of his skin from all the chips. Although it was nauseating, it was also strangely enticing. She had only been around nothing but healthy, well trained men in great shape her whole life. Never rolled in the sand with a pig like fellow.
He heard the tires screech by the beach walk. He could see two men getting out of a black M6 Grande Coup. As he rolled over on top of her in order to break away she said.
"You are in really deep shit now."
He saw them breaking in a run, their eyes narrowing, their hands reaching inside their suit jackets.
"Good!" He laughed, breaking away, running through the crowd toward the ocean.
The blue is not so blue, having gone whiter every day, The edges of the waves sparkle like diamonds of the gods, it does not matter if I get away, it does not matter if I die. His was an ecstatic panic not even dulled by the air crackling by his ear from the bullets. He looked up into the sky, to say goodbye goodbye to the cruel world and life he had failed and spotted the drone, which was lower now, and sported a blinking pink light. He heard a thump behind him, along with the sound that reminded him of one Christmas, frustrated with the turkey, his first wife badgering him to eternity, he tore the turkey apart and cast it at all the family and gathered guests. A perfect image to die on, the thought. But he felt something moist and hard land in the crease of his inner arm as he ran. He slowed down and took it with two fingers, now coming to a stop. What is it...what the hell is it? Half wrapped in what looked like three teeth of a zipper and burnt white fabric, he recognized the penis head. Turning around slowly he saw the black marks where the men had once been. All that was left were bits of fabric and flesh the gulls would reclaim.
Holy fuck.
He looked down at his hands. In his right index finger and thumb the SD card, in the left the last of a man of which every man makes too much. The drone was close enough now for him to feel the shadow as well as he could feel the tide coming in to his ankles.
He sought for a poetic moment, trying to free himself with his obsession with potato chips. And he remembered the lines from a book a fellow "client" had given him, called the trilogy, whilst in Morning Glory Heights Bright Future Clinic. Is it true that the devils do not feel the pains of hell?
There was nothing to do now but keep running.
" Morals is the butter for those who have no bread."
— B. Traven