Czolgosz

The agitation had settled in. I laid there not asleep. I had long since dismissed the notion of trying to fathom women. I wasn't one of those "I just can't understand girls, man", geeks. I understood them fine. In truth, this understanding was all too boring. To one degree or another, women are just like men; simple and cruel. There is no science to it at all. Trying to find some meaning in it is just a fuck off.

            I rolled out of bed and lit a cigarette. I hacked and spit and cursed the taste of cigarettes. I remembered why I don't smoke sober. I hit it harder and listened for the burn. The sound that's so very cool in movies when the frantic everyman on the edge of doing something heroic drags and the shit burns for him. The cherry understands that this cat had no time to be fussing about with his nicotine intake and accelerates itself up towards the filter so easily that it even hisses for his sonic pleasure. I listened carefully and maybe because of the otherwise silence of the room or maybe because of my desperation to hear it, I heard it. The mother hissed for me. I fucking ran down the stairs.

            I drove to her house. She was awake. She always is.  She is like every other girl that you like. The royal you. They are all the same. A rerun of a show you never liked in the first place, but will still sit and watch every time it comes on. She has that hair, only slightly styled. Only slightly styled in a manner that only manicuring it in every reflective surface she comes across all day can maintain. She has that and she has those. And she, they, knows, know, it and she, they, knows, know that I, you, know it. And she has those eyes. And she has those motherfucking eyes. And while pleasantries were exchanged she almost tricked me into believing she was human.

            She reached up and, ever so slightly, touched the back of my neck. She rested her hand there and looked up at me with that dumb, that empty, that longing, that-run-me-the-fuck-over-like-I wandered-in-front-of-a–bus-look. I'm easy, but I'm no slut so I... Untrue, her bird was in the room and that bird inhibits my admirable prowess. I grabbed her by the wrist and felt a patch of hair. I brought the hand around to my face and in front of my eyes the hair, a blue grey, first encircled her wrist and then encompassed the entirety of her whole arm. She howled and bit my face off. I bled to death.

            In heaven, I smoked opium with William McKinley. He tells me, "It wasn't the second bullet that really killed me; it was that dammed GANGRENE, mah boy!"  Annnnd we laauuuugggghed. Then we smoked more opium because Bill only had that one joke. After awhile Bill looked at me  over the pipe. He set it down on the cloud table and pointed his index finger at me, "You."

I sat there waiting. He just kept pointing his finger at me, sometimes waving it slightly. "What? What? Why are you pointing at me?"

            "I know how you ended up here. I've seen it before"

            "Chick bit my head off"

            "Happens all the time"

            "No, it does not happen all the time. I don't think has ever happened before"

            "Sure does. Ah, young love. The burning, the utter futility.  What'd you take pills?"

            "What? Pills? No, with her teeth, bit my head, clean off man. Clean off. Big mess."

            "Yes. Yes,  cuts like the sharpest blade" He picked up the pipe, took a good sized hit, settled back into his cloud chair, pointed his index finger in the air and waggled it, then blew smoke in my face. "You know, you should try again, mah boy. If you're willing to sacrifice yourself, you should at least try to explain your passion for her"

            "I didn't sacrifice anything"

            "You should put more value on your life mah boy"

            "No, man. She offed me. What do you mean try again?"

            "Try again. Go back. Be better" Bill was yawning, annoyed with my obvious questions I guess.

            "I can't. Dead. Dead. Deaaaaa-a-ddd-dah," I sang that last part because when you sing things in an obnoxious fashion it makes them truer.

            "Suiciders also don't get into Shangri La-Lah-Di-dah.  Many would contest that this here real estate doesn't even exist. Don't be a square man. It's all about the power of positive thinking. Haven't you ever read The Secret?"

            "No, Oprah recommends shit I think"

            "Did Oprah recommend it?"

            "I dunno man sounds like something she would. All that middle age self empowerment nonsense." Bill wasn't even listening anymore. He was nodding off while watching a table tennis match through an open cloud door in the cloud commissary down the cloud hall. "Hey! So, what I just waltz on down to Saint Peter six kinds of schwacked off your stash here and tell him to gah' head and open them gates back up? That would really give you the titters wouldn't it?"

            "Was that really Saint Peter up by the gates?"

            "I do not know, he looked stoic. Answer my question."

            "Just go back to when things were good. Go ahead. Think of it. Try right now."

            I shut my eyes. There was smoke. There were sparks. There were stars doing the foxtrot endlessly in the ballroom of the cosmos. Sitar Music. Etcetera. I opened my eyes. Bill lounged farther into his cloud chair eating Doritos so content I almost hesitated to bother him. "Still here dude."

            "You didn't try. You didn't believe it. You thought, 'Nothing's going to happen.' You thought, 'I'm going to take this here opportunity to make some quip about the cosmos and giggle to myself. Tee hee hee. Sitar Hee hee. Friggin girl. Try again, like you want to live. Like you want to go back"

            It all rang very hollow to me, "Like Peter Pan. I can't fly if I don't really think I can, huh?"

            "More or less, without the child touching overtones. Listen, the reason you failed with this chick is the same reason you can't hack going back. You don't care, you don't try. Just another self fulfilling prophecy, you've convinced yourself that everything is bound to suck, so it does. You can have nearly anything you want if you believe you deserve to have it. Work up a little positive self image, ass."

            "What if she bites my head off again? What then Dr Phil?"

            "Maybe if you let her whine about that other girl she hates at work a little longer or give her a backrub without groping her it won't get to that point in the first place. As far that lycanthropy thing I'd button your lips, they've got a bit of a big brother regime going up here and they don't appreciate kids like you whining about your supernatural."

            "Alright man. I'm am going back. It'll be awesome.  Thanks for the help"

            Bill took a final hit of his pipe, leaned on his haunches, and signaled me towards him with his ever waggling finger," No one likes a smartass. Kiss the sky mah boy" and blew a last, more direct, plume of smoke in my face.

            I choked but I didn't cough.

5 Pm dim going on dark. Birds and shit. They almost sounded inviting. It would still be cold though. Cold and pissy. The old dude downstairs arrived home and slammed his car door. Then, he stomped up the walk, and slammed the door to his apartment. Slam, Stomp, Stomp, Stomp, Slam. He and his slightly less old wife immediately began jabbering at each other. Not arguing really, their tones were just sort of combative. Each excitedly bidding for the other's attention for their tidbit about, you know, TV, what time the mailman showed up. I laid there and listened. I didn't really want to. But trying anything else was a risk. Their repartee was a safe, boring, happy medium. Maybe not so much happy.

            After about an hour he left for, whatever; Blockbuster, Bowling league, Strange Pussy. Slam, Stomp, Stomp, Stomp, Slam. His departure wasn't an unhappy one. After so many years I guess they'd figured out that if you hung out too long you'd run out of things to bullshit about. Sans bullshit you were just left with the other person and they could get pretty weird on you.

            I thought about getting drunk. I thought, I could get drunk and watch TV. I was out of beer though and I didn't feel like making a run. The clerks at all the stores were beginning to know me and call me "buddy". I really didn't need buddies whose life was selling lotto tickets and getting a gun shoved in their face every other month for cartons of Newports.

            I had to get out though. The slightly less old lady was making eggs and I hate the smell of eggs.

            I put on a sweat shirt and checked myself out in the mirror. Soft, pale, greasy, bearded, pimples, awesome, awesome. I climbed into my car, although, climbed is a misnomer. I don't drive the goddamned bat mobile.  Uncertain of where I was going, I hit the Wawa. I got skittles. I got a gallon of two percent milk. I bothered to make correct change. A lot of nickels. The cat behind the counter was not annoyed.

            I drove over there. Climbed the stairs. Left the skittles. Kept the milk. Hit the door with the jug. Thwap, Thwap, Thwap. "Hey," she said, sort of bothered but without a specific reason yet.

            "Dig it, milk", I held up the jug like one of those little league trophies even the fat kids get.

            "I don't have Kahlua."

            "It's alright dahhhhhling."

            I slid by and put the milk in the fridge. It fit well into the big empty spot where milk usually resides, but hadn't recently, that is until I had sauntered through those doors with my flowing white linen, golden locks, and angelic smile, or at least the milk.

            I hung out. She stayed in the room. She talked about TV, school, work. I hadn't done much of any of those recently so I let her talk. It wasn't bad. She was more interesting than most of the chicks I knew. Which, I guess, is logical.

I reached down to pick up this little ceramic elephant holding a bunch of rings on its' trunk. In the process I grazed her hand and she grasped a good half of my fingers, the half with the pinky, not the important one. I interlaced my fingers with hers and folded them over her knuckles. I stared at this sappy little display. I stretched my hand palm to palm with hers. I admired her dainty digits. Moreover, I noticed what I had that she didn't. There were no gnarled scars from punching furniture. There was no Neanderthal fur. Also absent was the electricity that we had cultivated so well some years ago. There was still the perspiration that she had apologized for so profusely at whatever worthless movie at whatever worthless theater. Like I cared. Like I wasn't so damn elated that a girl like her would at least tolerate me touching her for a few hours if only for appearances. Like I wouldn't walk around with my bucktoothed grin plastered all over my face for the next three days because she had even allowed me to feel her sweat.

            I grabbed her by the back of her neck and nuzzled my forehead into hers. I could feel her eyelashes brushing against my face, looking at me, expecting something, an explanation, wanting to me exist, with her, now, I kept my eyes shut tightly until she asked, "Is everything okay? Are you alright?"

            "I'm better. I was just afraid you'd bite my head off for stopping by without calling."

            She laughed and clamped her teeth lightly onto my ear and tugged. "Bitch..ow," I mumbled as I fell into her.

            After awhile I got up, "I gotta dip."

            "You don't wanna go out or anything?"

            "Nah that milk will have to satiate you until further notice."

            "Satiate me?"

            "Yeh," I said and then gave her the "O.K." symbol with my fingers. I'm not sure why. I don't know if I have ever given it before. I probably won't ever again.

            I closed the door, jogged down the steps, and got back in the car. Slam, Stomp Stomp, Stomp, Slam.

            I played a CD. It was a particularly tasty selection. I turned it up. Premature hearing loss be damned. At the stoplight before my house I pulled up next to a pissy middle aged dude in a pissy powder blue Buick. He kept shooting me glances. He didn't seem to dig on my muzak. It was a long light.

            I was in a decent mood and decided to compromise. I leaned over and with my finger drew a fairly decent sized cock with a fairly decent sized set of balls in the fog on my passenger side window. I returned to proper driving posture and turned the music up a notch. Some things cannot be appreciated at a considerate volume.