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Puppets by Paris Grim I was invoked by a transient outside of the seven eleven on the corner of LaBrea and Sunset in Los Angeles. Before the invocation, I was just like everyone else. No different, I swear. I only got deja vu once in a while, and I never learned shit from my dreams. They were just abstract nonsense. I didn't really even usually understand my horoscope. But there was destiny, begging for change in the evening on the curb. I plunked whatever non-paper money I had into his white paper cup, without looking at him. He began swishing around his change, which I became extremely aware of all the sudden. Then it all transmogrified. The dimes and pennies rolled up my spine, all cold and purposeful, and exploded in my head like an M80. I was a carnival meter to test ones strength and the little weight went straight up and rang my bell. It was the best orgasm I ever had. But it was better, because it was scary as hell. Like fucking on a roller coaster going backwards, upside down, while your skipping school. Maybe like you hear about autoasphyxiation, when French people choke each other while they come. I immediately started to convulse, and something started to dawn on me, while I was flapping there, like a fish. The amniotic sac had burst, my eyes were opening. Something pretty inexorable was cutting the cord. Kurtis, which I instantly new was the transient mans name, started to laugh like Scatman Carruthers in a Hong Kong Phooey cartoon. He dragged my apoplectic body into the alley behind the store, with no pause in the laughter. "Keep breathing, boy. Don't be like Clinton. Inhale! Here's where we shoot you out of the cannon. Try and enjoy the ride." I came to realize that not only was I aware of Kurtis' name, but more. Alot more. I could feel the young couple in the parking lot fighting over money. They had enough money for baby food, for their child Malcolm, or for cigarettes. They were torn about which to buy. I was in the head of Sam, the entertainment exec stopping at the store to buy Evian. Looking out his eyes with disgust at the foreign teller who was neither a "deal maker" or one of the "beautiful people." He was not a piece in the game that was Sam's world, where a person's only value was their use to Sam. I recoiled from that world. Then the clerk, tired and desperate to be done with this shift, a double and the third one this week. God, our eyes hurt from that damn flourescent light. It made everything so ugly. It was a shitty way to view the world. Next a single mother, Lisa, trying to get to the pre-school to pick up her children, before she was late and they charged her extra for the evening session, which she could not afford. Then I was in the heads of all the people in all the cars going by, desperate to get THERE. Conviced that their destination was the most important. I felt all their hopes and thoughts. Their thoughts. So many people. Mostly fear and mistrust. It became a hurricane. I was on the crest of a hundred foot tsunami, dimly aware that I was hyperventilating, and my tounge was bleeding from me biting it. The timpani drum beats of all of their hearts were deafening. All of their rhythms conflicting, some kind of crazy assed jazz cacophony. This was too much, I was sinking. Fucking Kamikaze whine. In one last lunge to pull myself out of this chaos, I focused my will. "Ppplease.."rasped almost inaudibly from my lips. "Beg, baby. Beg for your love," laughed Kurtis. For one split second all those disparate pulses came together, stark against a wall of silence. THUMP. THUMP. The wave was dropping and in this moment all these islands of ego became aware they were not alone. In their state of paranoia and fear, their urban angst, it was totally disturbing to them. I pulled back their skin and poked them with a stick pin, and watched them flex involuntarily.Turk, the punk rock flower delivery guy immediately slammed his VW microbus into the Jaguar of Mona, the divorcee from Beverly Hills. He spilled scalding black coffee all over himself, sending a flash of pain across the network. The wave crashed. Into horns blaring, people screaming.There was a pile up.But really, they were relieved to be alone again. Nobody wants nobody else looking in, like that. It was folding back in on me, their thoughts and feelings. Twice as loud now that they had been stirred up. I was enveloped by it, dragged down in. "Bye, bye, cutie pie," laughed Kurtis as blackness warmed me. |
