Chapter One
It`s 12:45 at night, I’m sitting in front of my computer My ashtray looks like the beaches of Normandy after operation Neptune, but instead of German, American and British corpses lying lifeless on the sandy floor, It has Marlboros’ and half-finished Camels clumped under mounds of ashes.
The Flaming Lips’ new rendition of Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side is playing quietly in the background, as the throbbing bass line starts to fade away and the crashing cymbals come to a quite stop, as soon as the heavily distorted wah-wah guitar stops scratching, after the sun is eclipsed by the moon and all you can hear is a pulsating heart I take the last gulp out of a cheap box of wine, and stuff a dozen orange Darvocet pills down my throat, containing 100 mgs of Dextropropoxypheneeach.
I started taking these when I was young, the doctor told me that it would help get rid of my RLS, which I now glance down to notice I still have. After taking them for a while I kind of grew fond of them and never stopped taking them, I recently read somewhere that it has become the most common doctor-prescribed medication for old and sick people to kill themselves.
Interesting…
It seems to be my fourth failed attempt this week of trying to get drunk enough to fall asleep. It’s been like this for a while now; I guess my tolerance is growing a little out of hand. As I wait for pill induced sleep to comfort me I start reading a news article about this guy Asamoah Gyan, a member of Ghana’s national soccer team who’s getting death threats just for messing up some plays.
Death threats.
From his own countrymen.
Damn the Darvocet is starting to kick in, got to get some sleep.
6:30 am, Bonehead from Naked City comes blasting out of two speakers connected to my cell phone, it’s my alarm,It’s the only way I can get up in the morning, I’m such a heavy sleeper even when I’m not drunk or hung over, regular alarms won’t work.
Delayed sleep phase syndrome.
I had such I weird dream last night, I dreampt of a utopian civilization in the future, it was unlike anything Thomas Moore on Methaqualone mixed with acid would have ever imagined. It was so real I could feel I was there.
I get up, shake my leg, as I adjust my underwear and walk out of bed.
I can’t really rememberhow it started as with most dreams, what you perceive in the morning are just flashes of what happened in your brain, it feels like the equivalent of a night of heavy drinking where you black out, and the next day you don’t remember what the hell happened, during the day you’ll keep getting these images that let you know more or less what went on, as if your brain couldn’t cope if the information was revealed to you all at once.
I put my foot in the shower, making sure the cold water has turned warm before I get in.
I seem to come out of an outdoor room, it is surrounded by many rooms exactly like it big wooden boxes that have huge plate glass windows making up the walls. The passage that leads outside is lined with old roses, white Albas with pale shades of pink adorning each step you take. The rooms seem to be surrounded by stunning almost painterly herbaceous borders, from this distance they don’t even seem like flowers or leaves, they look like giant brushstrokes, like the sort of foliage you’d find in a Pierre Renoir painting.
As you walk down the huge slate stairs, you see amazing topiary landscapes that adorn the vast alpine meadows, boxwood trees shaped like pyramids, holly trees trimmed in every geometrical shape imaginable, carpets made up of an endless array of every flower imaginable; Rhododendron, blushing pinkazaleas,morning glories, purple globe masters, lady orchids, Persian buttercups, dreaming maids, daffodils, tulips, lilies, and violets.
I get out of the shower dry myself off, the towel has a picture of an alligator wearing a shirt with a man’s body as a logo, I guess it’s some odd nod to the Lacoste brand. I almost fall as I clumsily try to dry my feet while standing up one-leggedly alternating my leg to dry one foot at a time.
As I continue to go down the steps, they slowly start turning into sand, leading down to a beach, I clime down and realize that it’s not just one beach, there are many crescent pink sand beaches spread across the shore of an endless ocean, separated only by gigantic granite boulders, curved in a way only Salvador Dali could have painted, palm trees are lined up reaching up as if they were hands trying to touch the blue sky, marble white parasol umbrellas sit atop long bamboo shafts, giving shade to old couples reading novels, it all leads to a turquoise ocean with crystal-clear water.
Children run around throwing red freezbies that there terriers catch in midair, little girls run alongside their toy poodles; the sky is stained with a thousand kites floating in the breeze. Couples rubbing sun tan on each other’s backs.
As I start to shave my face, I look at the mirror and notice how the bags under my eyes keeping getting bigger and deeper, I wonder why they call them raccoon attacks, if you look like one I wouldn’t think they’d attack you.
I find myself in an intricate array of elevators, elevators that go up and down, sideways, diagonally, forward and backwards,I realize then that I am in the machine room,I hear the roaring sound of electrical motors that give the rotary pumps the power they need to force the oil into the cylinders, which pushes the piston upwards, inches away from my face.I guess I’m not supposed to be here, I feel lost, I feel I’ve lost someone.
I go to my closet to get my underwear and pants, today is Monday so I grab the blue ones with light blue stripes running down.
Now I’m at a club, some weird combination of techno and Cuban jazz is playing at full blast, in the middle of the club on the roof hangs a cone made up of huge flat screens projecting different images of sexy girls dancing, they are silhouettes, their skin is bright red, and the bikinis they are wearing are white, the background is pitch black, like that Queens of the stone age video.
Red, white and black.
I often have entire dreams made up of those colors and it scares me in the morning.
I struggle to find my belt; I swear it was on top of my bed.
I seem to be with a girl a very beautiful girl, long black hair, darker than the background in the video, but it shines, it shines all over the room, wave after wave, darkness has never shined so beautifully, and it rests gently on her perfect white face, the kind of white that you only see on angels in movies, and it all leads to her big green eyes, if you look closely you can make up entire galaxies with the colors found in the small circumference around her pupils.
I found the belt; it was under a stack of dirty t-shirts.
She seems to be getting in an argument with some other girl at the club. They’re really going at it, all of a sudden the other girl slaps her, and I get furious, I start screaming at her and somehow I manage to hit her.
I would never do that in real life. So it was a dream.
I go to get my shirt, a blue one, with thin white lines running down the whole shirt, it fits just right when tugged in, not like all my other shirts that leave a bag of air on the back when tugged.
in a matter of seconds cops start swarming in, all dressed in black uniforms, visors covering up their faces, the acronym Swat stands out in big white bold letters written across their chests, some even seem to come down rappelling from the ceiling, I grab the girl by the wrist and try to find a way out, tugging and pulling her in between couples dancing, pushing waitresses and busboys aside, we escape through one of the fire exits, as I’m going down the stairs I notice a picture of a man escaping the clutches of many tentacles.
I enter what seems to be an airport terminal, thousands of people dressed in weird costumes, the type you’d expect to see people wearing in the future, they are looking for their gates to board, but there are no planes, they are all lining up to enter huge elevator boxes, modern elevators with mirrors on each wall, the floor is made up of Perspex with neon blue light emanating from under it, as if they where the elevators that take you to heaven. I can’t stop long enough to admire it, we run pass some security guard into a door marked “Do Not Enter” and end up in a maze of elevators which I immediately connect with my previous flash, and this is where I lose her.
I can’t find my toothbrush. I’m late so I just squirt some toothpaste in my finger and work with that.
I’m all alone wondering the streets of this strange futuristic city, targeted advertising offer you the latest hovering shoe, billboards wave back and talk to you inviting you to try the newest flavor of Icola, sky scrapers fit to accommodate 130,000 people stretch up as far as the eye can see, highways stack up one on top of each other practically blocking the night sky.
As I walk down an empty street I see a group of people gathered around what seems to be a night club, I realize this is the only group of people I’ve seen since I left those elevators, so I close in on the crowd and realize that it’s a strip club, hesitatingly I decide to go inside, I find my way through the line and no one seems to mind I’m cutting in.
Inside the club I expect to see half naked women sliding down polls, desperate men trying to buy them off with drink coupons, pissed off bouncers carrying some poor fucker who had too much to drink and got a little carried away with one of the girls.
But I see none of these, what I see just further confirms it had to be a dream, you just don’t realize it when you’re in it, just hours later when your safely eating your beagle on your way to the bus stop. Only then does it seem strange.
What I see are horrifying zombie women dancing to monotone drones, from the shadows they appear to be normal strippers, but when you get in for a closer look, you can see that instead of healthy looking pink skin, they have putrefied green colored tans, the healthiest parts of their bodies have the color of week old bruises, they wheeze and drool, as they perform they’re conditioned routine, long crystal heels lead to wet gangrened legs. Long, swollen blistered legs infested with Necrotizing fasciitis, pieces of dead skin falling apart as they twirl on stage, some are missing entire body parts, which are replaced by prosthetic limbs, myoelectric arms grab on to the slime covered polls, Instead of the fake stripper smile they flash they’re black, rotting teeth.
Business men in thousand dollar suites wave pieces of raw meat instead of dollars, the blood running down their hands, teasing the girls, when they get to close someone zaps them with long electric cattle prods.
I make my way through the crowd, and I see I circle of shouting men, screaming and waving real money as if there were some type of gambling going on, some type of game, men in Armani suits are placing thousand dollar watches just to get in on the action, filthy drug dealers in grease stained wife beaters exchange their merchandise for betting cash, moving back I bump the guy who seems to be the ring leader of this strange circus, he asks me if I want in on the main show, he says last week a mechanic won 15 thousand dollars.
I glance to see a pair of girls sown together from the back, there not conjoined twins, but have been altered to be that way; metal hooks join each other’s spines together. The girl’s faces have four metal hooks stretching out their lips from the back, keeping their mouths open, like a Joel Peter Witkin photograph the hooks intertwine at the back, forming a single piece. As I get in to get a closer look, I see that in front of each of the surgically misshapen monsters lies an infant child, crying.
And now I see what the game is, what the men are betting on, the beast start lunging and pulling at each other trying to reach their prize, each getting angrier and hungrier by the second, they scream as the copper suter holding them together starts to rip their skin apart, the surgical staples fall to the floor still attached to pieces of muscle and skin, and then suddenly with one jerk one of the monsters rips free, the others spine dangles from its back. As it gets ready to pounce and devour the child, I jump in, its claws scrape away at my throat and I start gushing out blood.
Where is the cattle prod security when you need it?
This is where I wake up, Bone Head at full blast.
I’m riding the bus to work, I’m late.
