Alien Presence: Things Fall Apart
The who-knows-how-old-woman
on the bar stool next to him was
stuck in some self-perpetuating
talking binge that could drive a
man to violence.
She was somewhere
between thirty and ageless,
all of her body functions in cessation
except that center of speech,
rambling on without benefit
of human constraint, a kind of alien
possession making her an automaton
in human skin fueled by alcohol
and stuck in high gear no one could
down shift to neutral. He considered
suggesting they go to her room, cell,
cloister, on the off-chance she might
have a pair of rolled up gym socks
he could use as gag to maybe muffle
the sound emanating from her like
a death ray or a Star Trek stun gun.
It was probably hopeless but maybe
worth a shot. Even considered trying
her on for size: she wasn’t half-bad
in a certain kind of light. Not here, in
various shades of neon, but in the dark
of a room with black out curtains pulled
tight.
Somehow, he just knew the inevitable
would happen in mid-whatever: one or
both of them would lapse into an alcoholic
coma and eventually she’d come to,
transform herself from whatever into
a migraine with tits. Much as he was not
inclined to moving: a body at rest and
all that, he knew it was time to sail, said,
“Ship ahoy, mates. Ship ahoy.”
Staggered through the pub door into
a vast unknown as she talked on, oblivious
to his passing on.
In the dark, ripped out
of his gourd, in the confusion of all this
new, nebulous stimulation, nothing looked
familiar, He thought,” I’ve reached
the end of the world and I’m about to
fall off.”
Took one more step
Fell.
Space
Junkies
If it were Halloween, these
guys
would have fit right in or
even
if it had been New Year’s Eve
or
Mardi Gras and they had been
on
the way to some end of the
world
as we know it party, but it
was none
of those, not the kind of
place that
dressing like Gary Glitters,
Ziggy
Stardust clones on some kind of
Velvet Goldmine club quest,
ostentatiously pierced all
about their
bodies, tacky make up and
costume
clothes like stiff out of
Harper’s Bizarre,
Warhol’s Pandora Box
wardrobe, body
art by some demented freak on
speed
with a butcher’s knife
instead of a tattooist’s
tools, the only discernible
images, death
cultist symbols and the
leader of the pack’s
Gothic lettered phrase” PISS
FACTORY,
forming a semi-circle around
his navel,
all of them stoned to the
gills and clearly
hostile, in need of sedatives
to slow
the virtual China syndrome
chemical mix
threatening to flatline their
vital organs,
close their bodies down, the
take-me-to-
your-leader gesturing at the
barman,
pointing at the back bar high
octane rocket fuel
bottles, waving fifty dollar
bills as an attention
getting aid, trying to bridge
a considerable
language gap with guttural
noise making
and even more frantic waving,
succeeding
only in creating an image of
Euro trash on tour,
way lost on some highway to
hell they were
building as they went,
oblivious to their
surroundings and determined
to stay that way.
Space
Cowboy
like some kind of urbane
cowpoke
in second hand store bought
jeans
and shirts only worn on the
range
for cooking dinners on
electric
stove tops or for warming
instant
coffee to pour in a
Trailblazers mug
he mistakes for the emblem of
some
Wild West Show. Even after
hours,
Perfecting his image and
stride in
full length mirror, he’s
spotted as a
dude walking into a bar,
singled out
for some major attitude
adjustment
by unspoken agreement among
regulars
he asks about the real Area
51, they’d
send him looking for by
shortcuts and
made up state highways that
would lead
him all the way up to Wyoming
once
he’d recovered from all the
mind altering
stuff they’d put in hi shots
and beers,
telling him it was the local
custom,
and he’d gleefully agreed
without pausing
to ask what the special
ingredients were,
not that they would have told
him; these
recipes were a carefully
guarded secret
as these things should
be.
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