Started chapter one a few nights back and this is what I have so far. I'm posting here as backup since my system needs to be backed up so I can start killing everything in it and then reformat. Hopefully that's all I needto do and I don't have to buy a harddrive. We'll see. Enjoy and tell me what you think if you would.
ONE
The sky bleeds with cracked lips, a kiss from the angels to the damned. Nothing wrong with the sky, it's blue, but no cloud cover and the sun appears behind a magnifying glass to confront this planet. We're losing and it's hot.
The car groans down the road and laughs at the piles of dirt we pass trying to run from the city where sin breeds. The horizon line sits so far in front of me that I can't see it clearly, it blurs with the ground and they're two distinctly different colors. In the rearview mirror, the city where venereals walk safely and sins sell for less than a beer falls away. The mirror could fall off the windshield and I could still see that blister in the desert, so I push the gas pedal closer to the floor, because Vegas is a place you leave.
I flip the radio dial and nothing spills through the speakers, but static. A box of tapes sits in the back seat unused since I bought the car, no tape player. I went from driving and jamming to Aftermath from the 'Stones to listening to the symphonies of the wind whistling around the car as I speed through the vast emptiness of Nevada deserts.
***
Birds, two, sitting on a wire, cuddled together as a storm gathers along the horizon. A speck of dust swirling to the untrained eye, and for the trained one a violent city laid in ruins. Trailer homes and kitchen stoves, wheels and flower pots, telephone poles and missing children, everything devastated and laid in ruin, a waste of man's industrial efforts failed by a single storm, but there's a red bow intact on a piece of wreckage and the news mistakes it for a symbol of hope. Where's the hope? The child cannot be found and we find hope in that. I'll give them credit, the way they frame the ribbon on the splintered plywood and the music they chose to play behind it, it's beautiful.
***
Driving alone on a deserted road with no radio to serve as a talking companion lets your mind stray. I haven't thought of anything coherently for the past thirty minutes, but I try. The car feels hotter and I turn on the air, but nothing changes. The first button around my throat of the tripled blue striped shirt comes undone and exposes the white cotton tee, skin shining with the glisten of sweat like a camel's hide when soaked. The hair black like a rottweiler's fur falls into the brow, dripping onto my nose and my tongue licks at the sweat, savoring the salt.
When you get pulled over by a cop you should always try to act collected and it helps to have a presentable appearance, hence the fancy shirt.
In Vegas, the more money you appear to have the more money they're willing to spend on you. Play it safe throughout the evening, make a few big risky bets that you have a better chance of losing than winning and they'll keep you liquored until you can't stand up. Hence the tan.
Bluffing is a good trick to have in your arsenal in order to have a good time.
But none of that matters now, hair disheveled, sweat dripping from the bone, and tan melting off the skin. I bought it in a bottle. It should flake off. I pull over to the side of the road and kick open the glove compartment, pull out the titanium hypodermic needle case. Unvelcro the vial and syringe, choose needle, attach to syringe, insert in vial, forgot a step, pull off belt, fasten around arm, pull tight with teeth, tap vein, flick needle, squirt, inject, sigh.
***
My eyes flutter open and drool hung from my lip. The world flies past me like birds running from a tornado, but I sit in the passenger seat, my foot not touching the pedal.
Finally you've woken up, you've been out for at least ... three hours. I needed to get somewhere and I found your car on the side of the road, hope you don't mind.
She smiled from above with ruby lips, but no lipstick, naturally red and full. Lips that called me forward to kiss them. No strength to move upward. I drag my hand up under my body and across my mouth, miss and try again. I'm curled in the bottom the chair under the glove compartment with my face mashed in the seat. She shakes her head and the red fat streaks look like ribbons against her opal hair stopping just before her cheekbone facing outward as if trying to minimize contact with the skin. A pink star on her cheekbone pokes out from under her hair, which makes no effort to conceal it.
Star?
She looks down at my crumpled body with a smile and pats me on the head with her right hand the other resting on the door, holding the wheel lightly.
No, my name is Snow, but that's a cute name. I think I'll call you it.
I look at her baffled.
The trail of stars on your arm that I had to pull the needle out of before I could move you.
I rub my hand along the inner left arm over the trail, never taking my eyes off her, and feel nothing. Questions swarm into my head like tiny birds and peck at the skull trying to break free. I hear flies with more clarity than the wind, but there are none around. The belt tight around my arm still. I try to undo and my dexterity fails me. I remain where I am, but I hear voices and feel birds concentrating their combined peck in one spot. This must be what the road feels like when a jack hammer hits it.
Do you have Tylenol? I ask.
She pulls her purse from the backseat and it dawns on me that you can no longer see the back seat. She covered it with her bags. Her hand reappears in my frame of vision and two pills rest against the joints in her fingers. I attempt a smile, but nothing comes and I take the pills and swallow them whole. Nothing stops immediately, but three years of silence compacted into ten minutes later and I lift myself into the seat properly, my face in my hands, seatbelt secured.
You okay? she asks.
Not sure, who are you, again?
Snow.
Deja vu. I turn in the seat towards her so I can see her while I talk.
And why are you driving my car, again?
She turns and looks me in the eye for a second, before returning her gaze to the road. The desert disappearing around us with the speed we travel, but I can't see it happening.
I was hitchhiking when I saw your car. It didn't look like anyone was in it so I was going to hotwire it and be on my way, but then I saw you slumped across the seat and so I decided to wait for you to wake up. When you hadn't woken in about fifteen minutes, I took the needle out of your arm and pushed you into the passenger's seat. I thought no matter how far I got before you woke it would be further than if I had walked.
You were walking with all those bags?
I point across my body into the back seat where the vinyl hides under her bags.
Yes.
Too many bags, you couldn't walk with them all. So how about you tell the truth this time.
She glances at me again, but a smirk spreading through her lips.
You're a smart heroine junkie aren't you?
I'm not a junkie and no changing the subject.
She let's out the largest sigh the world could experience. Artificial, sure, but I'm positive Atlas wishes he could sigh that well to help release some of the burden on his shoulders as he holds up the world.
ONE
The sky bleeds with cracked lips, a kiss from the angels to the damned. Nothing wrong with the sky, it's blue, but no cloud cover and the sun appears behind a magnifying glass to confront this planet. We're losing and it's hot.
The car groans down the road and laughs at the piles of dirt we pass trying to run from the city where sin breeds. The horizon line sits so far in front of me that I can't see it clearly, it blurs with the ground and they're two distinctly different colors. In the rearview mirror, the city where venereals walk safely and sins sell for less than a beer falls away. The mirror could fall off the windshield and I could still see that blister in the desert, so I push the gas pedal closer to the floor, because Vegas is a place you leave.
I flip the radio dial and nothing spills through the speakers, but static. A box of tapes sits in the back seat unused since I bought the car, no tape player. I went from driving and jamming to Aftermath from the 'Stones to listening to the symphonies of the wind whistling around the car as I speed through the vast emptiness of Nevada deserts.
***
Birds, two, sitting on a wire, cuddled together as a storm gathers along the horizon. A speck of dust swirling to the untrained eye, and for the trained one a violent city laid in ruins. Trailer homes and kitchen stoves, wheels and flower pots, telephone poles and missing children, everything devastated and laid in ruin, a waste of man's industrial efforts failed by a single storm, but there's a red bow intact on a piece of wreckage and the news mistakes it for a symbol of hope. Where's the hope? The child cannot be found and we find hope in that. I'll give them credit, the way they frame the ribbon on the splintered plywood and the music they chose to play behind it, it's beautiful.
***
Driving alone on a deserted road with no radio to serve as a talking companion lets your mind stray. I haven't thought of anything coherently for the past thirty minutes, but I try. The car feels hotter and I turn on the air, but nothing changes. The first button around my throat of the tripled blue striped shirt comes undone and exposes the white cotton tee, skin shining with the glisten of sweat like a camel's hide when soaked. The hair black like a rottweiler's fur falls into the brow, dripping onto my nose and my tongue licks at the sweat, savoring the salt.
When you get pulled over by a cop you should always try to act collected and it helps to have a presentable appearance, hence the fancy shirt.
In Vegas, the more money you appear to have the more money they're willing to spend on you. Play it safe throughout the evening, make a few big risky bets that you have a better chance of losing than winning and they'll keep you liquored until you can't stand up. Hence the tan.
Bluffing is a good trick to have in your arsenal in order to have a good time.
But none of that matters now, hair disheveled, sweat dripping from the bone, and tan melting off the skin. I bought it in a bottle. It should flake off. I pull over to the side of the road and kick open the glove compartment, pull out the titanium hypodermic needle case. Unvelcro the vial and syringe, choose needle, attach to syringe, insert in vial, forgot a step, pull off belt, fasten around arm, pull tight with teeth, tap vein, flick needle, squirt, inject, sigh.
***
My eyes flutter open and drool hung from my lip. The world flies past me like birds running from a tornado, but I sit in the passenger seat, my foot not touching the pedal.
Finally you've woken up, you've been out for at least ... three hours. I needed to get somewhere and I found your car on the side of the road, hope you don't mind.
She smiled from above with ruby lips, but no lipstick, naturally red and full. Lips that called me forward to kiss them. No strength to move upward. I drag my hand up under my body and across my mouth, miss and try again. I'm curled in the bottom the chair under the glove compartment with my face mashed in the seat. She shakes her head and the red fat streaks look like ribbons against her opal hair stopping just before her cheekbone facing outward as if trying to minimize contact with the skin. A pink star on her cheekbone pokes out from under her hair, which makes no effort to conceal it.
Star?
She looks down at my crumpled body with a smile and pats me on the head with her right hand the other resting on the door, holding the wheel lightly.
No, my name is Snow, but that's a cute name. I think I'll call you it.
I look at her baffled.
The trail of stars on your arm that I had to pull the needle out of before I could move you.
I rub my hand along the inner left arm over the trail, never taking my eyes off her, and feel nothing. Questions swarm into my head like tiny birds and peck at the skull trying to break free. I hear flies with more clarity than the wind, but there are none around. The belt tight around my arm still. I try to undo and my dexterity fails me. I remain where I am, but I hear voices and feel birds concentrating their combined peck in one spot. This must be what the road feels like when a jack hammer hits it.
Do you have Tylenol? I ask.
She pulls her purse from the backseat and it dawns on me that you can no longer see the back seat. She covered it with her bags. Her hand reappears in my frame of vision and two pills rest against the joints in her fingers. I attempt a smile, but nothing comes and I take the pills and swallow them whole. Nothing stops immediately, but three years of silence compacted into ten minutes later and I lift myself into the seat properly, my face in my hands, seatbelt secured.
You okay? she asks.
Not sure, who are you, again?
Snow.
Deja vu. I turn in the seat towards her so I can see her while I talk.
And why are you driving my car, again?
She turns and looks me in the eye for a second, before returning her gaze to the road. The desert disappearing around us with the speed we travel, but I can't see it happening.
I was hitchhiking when I saw your car. It didn't look like anyone was in it so I was going to hotwire it and be on my way, but then I saw you slumped across the seat and so I decided to wait for you to wake up. When you hadn't woken in about fifteen minutes, I took the needle out of your arm and pushed you into the passenger's seat. I thought no matter how far I got before you woke it would be further than if I had walked.
You were walking with all those bags?
I point across my body into the back seat where the vinyl hides under her bags.
Yes.
Too many bags, you couldn't walk with them all. So how about you tell the truth this time.
She glances at me again, but a smirk spreading through her lips.
You're a smart heroine junkie aren't you?
I'm not a junkie and no changing the subject.
She let's out the largest sigh the world could experience. Artificial, sure, but I'm positive Atlas wishes he could sigh that well to help release some of the burden on his shoulders as he holds up the world.