doesnât serve much purpose in the blistering mid-afternoon sun whose glorious golden patina cruelly kisses and blisters even that which it does not touch. But his night vision penetrates great distances, piercing the heart of dead stars and black holes. His viridian eyes are cloudy pools of viscous liquid. I am no longer alone here. In my skin. No longer in control.
I move my lips in protest but my breath has turned to dust. My bones are hollow husks. Itâs all up to him now. Deadpan joker. Pokerfaced. A cheap practitioner of gruesome parlor tricks. Slight of hand. Geomancy. Games of chance. Baccarat. His specialtyâa seance of senseless violence. His favoriteâRussian Roulette. Using my head for target practice.
I have a soft spot for him. Though the feeling is not mutual. He hates my fucking guts. But he hates everyone and everything even more than he despises me. He merely uses me as puppet vehicle, a truck of flesh to drive his crimes.
Dry whispers. Dead kisses. Lips as thin as paper cuts. Mouthing instructions which I will fight with all my will not to follow: Throw myself under a school bus. A tractor trailer. Into the river. Off the roof of the post office. Into a speeding car. Fall asleep on the train tracks, moonlight leaking through dead leaves. Pick up the snub-nosed .38 Special and blow my left cheek off. Hang from the rafters, dangling on a dirty clothesline used as umbilical cord connecting me to Death.
A cool evening breeze kisses dirty feet, my tongue swollen, preventing argument against his hypnotic pull. His words choke in my throat, a seductive wheezing of parched breath. A lesser mortal would be made weak by his black magic mantra. One less rebellious might acquiesce, overcome by the need to please the person who seems to need nothing. Need no one. Need not even exist in clock time.
For the gravedigger of crushed dreams and false promises, that caretaker of the endless obsidian spiral has a penchant to materialize at random, to disappear for years on end and to reappear when and where you least expect him. His ability to cut a woman in half, in quarters, to watch her splinter, shatter, and dissolve into the dust from whence he comes, only to resuscitate her so she may live and die and live again as her mouth fills with his strangled breath, is testament enough to the dominion he holds over the hoax known as Deathâs Other Kingdom. For Death must surely be a hoax, a trick, a labyrinth, a secret passage with a hidden switchboard, separated from Life only by our mortal perception of it. For if you believe like I do in the invisibile, the inanimate, the inaudible, the impossible, then no doubt the Dead Man will one day also call your name. I know him well. He is my better half.
THE DEVILâS RACETRACK: RAY TRAILER
P risoner #32578 is shitting himself to death in the next cell. Every twenty minutes another round of bowel-splitting explosions rack his body. He coughs, cries out, pounds his head on the cinder block walls, and wails. The smell is awful. As thick as oatmeal. His impending death from dehydration signals small relief as its horrendous aroma wafts down the hall walloping the senses. Mingling with the already heady fragrance of thousands of spent bladders pissing into eternity since the turn of the century. The smell of old menâs fecal remains, their sour and rancid flesh rotting from the inside out, reeks until it stains the interior of your own nasal cavity, forcing you to become one with the smell. A seething odorama contaminated by the decay of hundreds of lost men whose very souls have started to stink.
Pickled feet and dirty fingernails. Silent pleas have been scratched into every surface, deep grooves in the floors, walls, bunks, sinks. An homage to endless days ill spent. Locked inside this human warehouse of disease and petty disasters. Where wasted lives count the days until release, relief, return, or death.
Another notch on the wall to keep you sane
I move my lips in protest but my breath has turned to dust. My bones are hollow husks. Itâs all up to him now. Deadpan joker. Pokerfaced. A cheap practitioner of gruesome parlor tricks. Slight of hand. Geomancy. Games of chance. Baccarat. His specialtyâa seance of senseless violence. His favoriteâRussian Roulette. Using my head for target practice.
I have a soft spot for him. Though the feeling is not mutual. He hates my fucking guts. But he hates everyone and everything even more than he despises me. He merely uses me as puppet vehicle, a truck of flesh to drive his crimes.
Dry whispers. Dead kisses. Lips as thin as paper cuts. Mouthing instructions which I will fight with all my will not to follow: Throw myself under a school bus. A tractor trailer. Into the river. Off the roof of the post office. Into a speeding car. Fall asleep on the train tracks, moonlight leaking through dead leaves. Pick up the snub-nosed .38 Special and blow my left cheek off. Hang from the rafters, dangling on a dirty clothesline used as umbilical cord connecting me to Death.
A cool evening breeze kisses dirty feet, my tongue swollen, preventing argument against his hypnotic pull. His words choke in my throat, a seductive wheezing of parched breath. A lesser mortal would be made weak by his black magic mantra. One less rebellious might acquiesce, overcome by the need to please the person who seems to need nothing. Need no one. Need not even exist in clock time.
For the gravedigger of crushed dreams and false promises, that caretaker of the endless obsidian spiral has a penchant to materialize at random, to disappear for years on end and to reappear when and where you least expect him. His ability to cut a woman in half, in quarters, to watch her splinter, shatter, and dissolve into the dust from whence he comes, only to resuscitate her so she may live and die and live again as her mouth fills with his strangled breath, is testament enough to the dominion he holds over the hoax known as Deathâs Other Kingdom. For Death must surely be a hoax, a trick, a labyrinth, a secret passage with a hidden switchboard, separated from Life only by our mortal perception of it. For if you believe like I do in the invisibile, the inanimate, the inaudible, the impossible, then no doubt the Dead Man will one day also call your name. I know him well. He is my better half.
THE DEVILâS RACETRACK: RAY TRAILER
P risoner #32578 is shitting himself to death in the next cell. Every twenty minutes another round of bowel-splitting explosions rack his body. He coughs, cries out, pounds his head on the cinder block walls, and wails. The smell is awful. As thick as oatmeal. His impending death from dehydration signals small relief as its horrendous aroma wafts down the hall walloping the senses. Mingling with the already heady fragrance of thousands of spent bladders pissing into eternity since the turn of the century. The smell of old menâs fecal remains, their sour and rancid flesh rotting from the inside out, reeks until it stains the interior of your own nasal cavity, forcing you to become one with the smell. A seething odorama contaminated by the decay of hundreds of lost men whose very souls have started to stink.
Pickled feet and dirty fingernails. Silent pleas have been scratched into every surface, deep grooves in the floors, walls, bunks, sinks. An homage to endless days ill spent. Locked inside this human warehouse of disease and petty disasters. Where wasted lives count the days until release, relief, return, or death.
Another notch on the wall to keep you sane
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