Space
Invaders
They cruised into the
bar
as if they'd been
tripping
the light fantastic on
some
Trans Siberian Railway
of
the mind so totally
fried,
their frayed filthy
clothes
and near shoulder length
hair
was singed at the loose
ends
giving off a scent like
over-
wrought skunk and
death.
They were so obviously unwell
and primed for
inappropriate
social behavior, I asked
them
for their Red Cards, a
request
that briefly slowed them
down
to a near halt, "Red
Cards?"
"Yeah, they're like Green
Cards
or Alien Resident ID's
only
these are for Space
Invaders
from potentially hostile
planets."
"Space
Invaders?"
"Yeah, like the video
game.
You must have heard of it,
they
were popular in the last
century,
right around the time you
guys
were last straight and
sober."
The look they gave me
suggested
they didn't think what I was
saying
was funny. The look I was giving
them suggested I wasn't
trying to be.
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.
You could
say
he was a
tad
eccentric,
used
to go into
McDonald's,
order up a
Big
Mac cut
into
four pieces
&
have them
wrapped
individually,
makes
you wonder
doesn't
it? I'm still not sure
what was
odder,
the demand
or
fulfilling his
request
without so
much
as an eyelid
flutter
though you could
see
the counter
people
thinking and
would
you like some
double
thick shakes for the
long
ride home in
your
space ship
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