Cement Head

It gets old.  To them, that stuff is still brand new.  Still touching the edge of an ocean with a sponge and then running home with that sponge and squeezing it out into a jar.  When you're friends come over you can point to it on your window sill and say "yes, that was the time".  When you're friends are gone you can open up the jar and pour a little more on your dried up soul and feel rejuvenated.   Alive again, like nobodies business.  Eventually he'll grow up and realize there is no reason to not unzip your skin and throw your whole body into that ocean.  Kids these days.  "I was there too, once."  Letting go of his arm is harder to do than I expected.  It falls limp across my eyes and brow and I let it stay there to block out the fading, bluing, two foot square, window above my eyes.  "Then I realized things could get so much better."

Pembrow

"How is everything," she asked with a well rehearsed and well delivered grin.  Her cheeks were pulled back in the same way Pembrow pulled off.  His smile was feminine enough to disarm, but his teeth meshed in the jagged way reptile teeth matched, spine to gap, with a force of mechanical perfection one finds when watching rolls of razors shred paper into perfectly neat slips of refuse.  A mechanical perfection so well geared to turning order into charming chaos it was a wonder to see it work.  I blinked.  Was it Pembrow towering over me from the corner of my eye?  His face was the same, but where Larry and I hit our ceiling, all he did was grow taller, larger, thick necked in his time away.  The snap of the fireplace lighter's switch brought me back to the table,

Hero Status

***Without looking up he nudged his coffee cup toward the tender's edge of the bar and Fran, a sometimes friend and fellow member of the local bartending fraternity topped him off to the likely protests of the throngs of kids that always came to the bar at the same time and expected light speed service when there were 9 of them and just one Fran.  The ebb and flow of the kids coming and going buffeted him like rough tides.  It was fine when they all jammed up because they were stationary, and it was great when they were gone because he had space to breath.  The hard part was dealing with the influx and out flow in between high and low tides as they banged shoulders and hissed at each other like drunk penguins all trying to use one fax machine to send the exact same document to the same exact recipient, none of them realizing they had no business being in an office to begin with.***

Causeway

***"Roads out. Washed out." He squinted, he couldn't make out her face from where he stood.  His nostrils flared a moment as his lungs nipped into the filter. He spat the butt onto the gray, time slashed, pavement of Route 8 and watched Rawna climb through the empty windshield onto the hood. She formed her small hands into the shape of a megaphone.


"What!?"


He scratched his chin a moment, casting his eyes away from her sweat stretched pink tank top tweed slacks ensemble they'd picked out together at the local flea fair last season and into the cat tails in the ditch by the road side. He turned back to where Yipsbend road was supposed to have been. "The road's out! Causeway's gone."***

Blue Balls

***"Fifteen minutes to grid, Tino!" Scott shouted as he came alongside the two Eddleton wood hounds. He fished inside the passenger side window and found the cable that connected to the onboard processor right where he left it. He unraveled it from the roll cage side bars, hooked it into the laptop, and downloaded his figures. Oscar and Joney watched intently, arms over eachother's short shoulders like a couple of bar flys stumbling back to their hay stacks. They loved this part. A few short moments passed and the deep throated V8 gave a cry like a lion in heat with nothing but vaginas as far as the eye could see. The twin turbochargers spooled like a pair of dive bombers to full compression then evened out to a thin whine that promised instant death to anyone foolish enough to venture into the driver's line of sight. The entire car seemed to tremble with the will to devour everything in its path or die trying.***

Coral

***Coral turned back to his walk, the sweat on his brow cooling his skin despite the 102 degree heat.  "I'm sorry you don't have any more time for me to help you deepen that understanding," his smile was one of satisfaction.  It was the easy smile of a peace corps outreach officer who hadn't fixed the world, but who had helped, perhaps, to raise the wall of a home for an uncivilized tribesman in need of outside help.  As he walked his footsteps fell in time with the sound of the shovels; one splitting the dry and sun stiffened Earth, the other splitting bone and flesh.  "At least now we understand each other."***

Getting Warmer

***"I will not be silenced," he raised his voice to the pitch of small auditorium speech delivery.  Lizabeth glared for long seconds before thinking better of it and instead turning her focus and her body toward cleaning the taps and brass spill trays.  He crumbled a little and slouched once again to rest his elbows on the bar top, his hand gently sliding his mug a half inch this way, then a half inch that way.  "It wasn't nice was it?"

"I don't know why you do this to yourself, Dave.  Don was nice.  I thought he was nice.  He dressed nice.  You two always laugh a lot."
"Here.  We laugh a lot here," he corrected her, his eyes momentarily losing focus as he brought the mug to his face a little sharper than he intended, then dropped it back down having succeeded only in smacking his teeth with the hard rim. "Fuck."***

Interview #448-01C

***I tried a radio not too long ago, but the stations in Deeprath are worse than empty static.  Half a conversation can keep you awake a lot longer than the buzz of a dead antenna.  Half of an investigation can keep you up at least as stubbornly.  Weeks and Smith takes subcontracts at a lot of the facilities the state can't afford to keep its thumb on, partly because they're less glamorous posts, but mostly because the state is about out of thumbs between City Hall and plugging what spews out of its asshole and with the kind of week that my eyes saw and still cannot believe I'm sure the state badges are happy to have the hose pointed in anyone's face, but their own.***

Half Lives

***Mickey did not need to walk far to see the damage.  In the clear starlight his eyes were able to collect he could see that the rear passenger window was reduced to bits of glittering pellets, yawning at him like a black eye socket on a bone white shard of skull.  There were no footprints in the freshly fallen powder for him to trace.  He walked no further.  The window was not difficult for him to repair.  In fact the entire thing would be as easy as signing the paperwork and passing the bill receipts to the reimbursement clerks.  “Kids just don’t know the value of respect,” he sighed.  “Probably threw a frozen one from the street,” he hugged his arms about his stomach as he hustled his way the few feet back to his porch and began to stomp the excess snow from his thick boots.  Grasping the door knob, puzzlement descended on his eyes.  The door was locked.  “Anita,” he grumbled then chuckled, “what are you worried about.”  He fished the spare door key from beneath the floor mat and let himself in.***

Sand Pipers

***"Rob, look at you," her eyes smiled as she turned her round face toward his.  She let go of her knees and crossed her short, muscular, legs.  "Even for the white kids here you work ridiculously hard."  Sunnie turned her face back to the twinkling white caps as they sloshed onto the rocky beach several yards below them.  The sun was on the verge of rising above the haze and was starting to take on its familiar brilliant yellow again.

"I do not ," he said, and kicked himself.  The words sounded whiny in his own ears.  "Well, I mean that's just my mom and dad giving me shit, you know," he rebuffed.
"Whatever, man," she laughed again, but somehow with less mirth.  "You have any smokes," she asked.***

Richmond Is for Lovers

***“Alright, Desmond,” Loreen was not unattractive, but Mule was not at the shelter to shop for women.  “Good luck out there.  I know the world can be a harsh place.  Come on back if you need to.”  Her attempt at doe eyed concern was genuine.

“You got a lighter, sweetness?”  He wiggled his thumb in front of the black stick still pinned near the corner of his mouth.  Loreen placed a matchbook on the counter.

“You can keep that,” she offered a finger wiggling wave of her own, nailing elementary school coquette square on the head.  If Mule didn’t have other things to do he would most certainly take advantage of every opportunity to do fantastically athletic things to her.  He gave her a nod and turned for the door.  The thin strap of his shoulder tote was cutting into his neck and pulling his green t-shirt askew.  He reshouldered it, and struck a match, giving the cigarette a few healthy breaths before tossing the smoking match head into one of the leafy balls of shrubs lining the short walk to the street.***