 
TIME FLIES

a short story

written by mary fewko

TIME FLIES is a prequel

to the experimental story

FAUST DAYS AHEAD OF US

also written by mary fewko

This is a work of fiction. Though some content was inspired by first-person or semi-autobiographical involvement, all names and characters and places and incidents are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business enterprises, incidents, or sites is fully unplanned.

Copyright © July 2017 by Mary Fewko

SMASHWORDS Edition September 2017

Original cover

art created

by Jay Lincoln

© 2017

(Rochester, New York)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ®

And in this text, the term 'time flies' should not be understood as

its Latin exclamation 'tempus fugit,' while still astute

Virgil remains in saying 'fugit inreparabile tempus,'

or 'irretrievable time is flying,' (Georgics 3.284); rather

the following should not be experienced under the guise

of time and its hurried energy, but under the

author's suggestion, that this should be viewed as

TIME IS DEAD and has flies hovering about it . . . time flies

Mary Fewko

August 6, 2017

"Which shall be the darkness of God.

As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be..."

-T.S. ELLIOT

The whole family watched the inhumanity of war. Though at a distance from it, guarded by a simple television -such a device- designed to receive sights and sounds, attracted Pax, this young girl, too young to understand the world, or inhumanity, or relations, or why a family might spend its time watching war instead of watching the little girl, the little girl so unseen, gripped by the gore on the television.

This was the living room. Pax sat on the floor, glaring at the TV, the cruelty of the fighting, the violence, the brute force over competition, crusades, political, nuclear, jihadist, guerilla, communist, atheist, loneliness, for the devil, for Christ, for none, for all, nothing for everything; the expression, 'war,' such a word -so simple in birth- a few meters taller than the word 'worse.' To be afraid of war was normal. Pax seemed to like the explosions she saw on the TV. Eventually the media of war's horror would, many years later, be on the phones, the same phones users might have turned to hoping to avoid the newsreel. The war on the television, on the phones, on the billboards, blimps, and every graffito caught in the orbit of armed national doom: all soon shell-shocked by the broadcast.

"Maybe she's got mental problems from... you know..." Pax's father Mikhail was sitting in his couch, very drunk with his vodka bottle in hand, "I mean, she's young but seems like she's a weirdo! That ain't a normal child, babe, she's too weird, the things she says... such a weirdo... she's got problems from... well... c'mon, you know..."

"What? Huh? Say it, say it you pinko," Pax's aunt Beth was pacing slightly in the living room. "You really want to keep talking?"

"It's Pax's mother's fault she's like this. Her weight gain, her crazy genes, I can't be to blame for this." He had a strange accent. Not by place of origin but more by feeling - a loneliness accent? A guilt accent, maybe?

Beth saw her sister Barbara crying in a chair, crying loud. Then Beth rushed over to Mikhail, grabbing him by the necklines, shaking him aggressively, "don't you start, Mikhail, don't you dare start, I'm going to end you, cut the shit, Mikhail!" Beth was shouting. Barbara was crying. Mikhail was brooding yet laughing. Pax was unobserved. Some other family member was on the phone in the kitchen, screaming at a bank teller, banging the phone receiver against the wall. Pax watched with such confusion, at the war abroad and the war at home.

The night segued into more fights between the couple plotting their divorce. And of course talks of Beth to Barbara about their mother, Pax's grandma on the verge of dying while leaving behind much distress over the will, and very little to one of her two daughters, and talks of property, whom will end up where, funeral costs, and so much more troubling drama that forever arrives when somebody dies... this is how time worked. A long noble reptile stretching out into the word, hissing with confidence, but stretching so far it failed to recall where its tail was rooted. Thus time croaks, and flies begin to hop along it, making jealous the fleas, locusts, gnats or any creepy-crawly arthropod addicted to time's carcass.

The entomological competition for landing-rights was over.

Time belongs to the flies. . . . . . . . . . . . .

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS

Pax and her friend Mariah were sitting at a bus stop in the city. Both questioning why their mid-to-late twenties felt so purposeless and so frightened of conclusion. Pax had a music playlist from her phone of cyber Goth tracks, penetrating her sense of incompletion. Mariah was reading a georgic poetry collection, obliging, in whatever way it managed, her redneck roots. Both kept trying to avoid the undiagnosed pains they dealt with minute-to-minute, err, thought-to-thought.

This age of high and wild technology introduced into society, so haphazardly, without consequences properly thought out in the 'what-ifs' for human attentiveness, biologic safety, organic compatibility, terroristic abuse, healthcare access, and so much more; the rich and semi-rich resorting to mechanical implants in their bodies, while five year olds were mastering tech hacking. Pax living thought-to-thought on the peripherals of a tough-love crux, feeling pushed into roles her natural gifts didn't synchronize well with. Mariah jinxed to repeat seven days and seven nights of downpour, mental bilateral blackmail, permanently living offstage from the heart of the world, her vulnerability growing thinner, as if it were condensed to surviving on diet of wings pulled from the figures of flies.

A nation rich in unemployed drudges, enormous corporations that had spread their flags thin, closing subsidiaries by the hour. Overdose fatalities were insufferably high; exceeding 9/11 by the week -every week\- the death toll growing by the statute; every week a 9/11 in every state.

"At work, it's like, when you see a customer with a Louis Vuitton bag, you know she's going to be a bitch!"

"Fact! Homos, too. I think even straight guys carry LV satchels now?"

"Doesn't matter who owns it, total bitch warning."

"My mom would buy one if she could cut back on her expensive booze budget, she's such a nasty drunk. Probably where I get my dependence problems!"

Taxis were driving on by in this western Volgograd, their speeds both slinky and stomach-churning. The city felt uncouth to these girls, and simply being girls in public was enough of a risk to carry mace or knives or chutzpah slogans, even brass knuckles made cat-themed because a compromise for protection was out of the question.

"Christ, I swear last night was so stressful. Mr. Righteous had me crying." Mariah closed her book, looking at her feet, pulling her long-sleeved shirt down, covering her entire hands at this point.

"Oh, baby girl, I'm sorry," Pax said with her usual pure compassion. "I know. His bipolar disorder can make him tough to be around," Pax also had a very solidified way of talking, of which Mariah was immensely jealous, though a jealous Mariah was by all means nothing new, only new jealousies day-to-day. Or minute-to-minute. Thought-to-thought, c-note-to-c-note, lollygag-to-lollygag, jolt-to-jolt, jaywalk-to-jaywalk...

"I keep hearing about this, collective drug out there? It's a, like a designer drug but works in such a diverse way. By standing close to others using it, like, the more users on it at the same time in a circle, the higher you get? A drug that works like Wi-Fi signals, maybe? I'm not describing it right."

A massive billboard began advertising a new experimental pharmaceutical called PlaisErthe, and then switched to a series of lawyers talking about their cases.

Pax suddenly had a bad pain in her left side. "Wait, baby girl, something's not right." And she was correct.

A man in very little clothing, completely undisguised, came up to the bus stop and shouted something obscured and then immediately threw acid in the face of somebody on Mariah's left side. All sitting in the terminal panicked, screaming, some cursing the regularity of acid attacks in the city. Bits had splashed onto Mariah's left arm, covered in a tight long-sleeve but still causing her to scream while Pax grabbed her by the shoulder and they ran away, like all else were. The attacker strolled in some opposite direction, speaking lyrics aloud about rape and abductions. There were screens all over the city. On every building, at every street corner, and inevitably, all cameras were facing the acid attacker and broadcasting his current position while data was typed at the bottom of the screen. The attacker walked like a superstar, and maybe felt like one. The bus still showed up and the attacker embarked as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn't been barking moments previous.

PAX / BABY YEARS (apples, horses, voda, жизнь)

"Oh my sweet little girl," Mikhail said, holding his new baby daughter and while also managing to take a chug of vodka. "Don't ever be like your mother, my babe, please... she's not well... she doesn't understand... understand me... but you... little Pax. You can make a difference... make this family have some particle of grace, and rather than put it high... keep it low and fortified... grace so low you can't fall from it... but grace... grace nonetheless... low-profile grace..."

Pax was crying loud so Mikhail used slight droplets of vodka to quiet her down.

"My baby girl... I wish we could talk together... have a conversation... do shots together... my baby girl... I can't wait to see you grow up... help me get better... and take care of your mother, too... I won't be able to... you beautiful little rug rat... I might not... I might not be around, my sweet baby girl... one day we can reunite... when the chariots are cheaper... you know? Hah... you don't know... but that day... the day of cheap chariots... oh, imagine the stateliness your father will exhibit... unhurried... grand... majestic... our own chariot... Pax... you... me... our chariot..."

Mikhail saw the television was on. There was talk of villages and suburban houses being bombed, of churches met with massive crowds, more than the churches could fit. So much inhumanity broadcasted. Mikhail imagined a future where people could have media that only told them the things they needed to hear, the important things in life, making everyone happier. Mikhail had a habit of always imagining everyone in his life happier, a daydream disciple, even Barbara, contrary to the actual words spoken to her. In these imaginations, a type of threshing occurred, where Mikhail could pluck from remote vines and weeds of his heart, any viable nutrition he could then provide his family with. But without them knowing.

"My baby girl... please help us out... help us all out..." Mikhail muted the television, holding his Pax and walking into the kitchen. The newspapers on the table as dark as any newsreel but in black and white the awfulness pricked less. Mikhail covered the newspapers with dinner bowls and alcohol glasses.

Mikhail took more chugs of vodka, holding Pax, and pacing around the kitchen. He began to sing her a lullaby in Russian. He sang of wide lakes, of nimble horses unharmed, of fresh apples landing in your hand at their ripest, of some mythical human who was also part cat; the spontaneous cradlesong turned Mikhail fairly lachrymose.

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (Sleuths upon sleuths)

Such an astonishing thing it was to embrace witchcraft, Pax realized. Providing protection spells while on the dance floor, lowering inflammation for her mother Barbara in times of discomfort, Pax felt like someone, with her wicca practicing, and not somebody you'd find on the city CCTV broadcasts, her stealth made her feel like someone special, the gorgeous irony of feeling famous by not being seen at all, being known by being incognito. But this was normal to Pax. A life so lonely, being unwatched, it seemed to stem from her childhood, having detrimental effects for many years until the covens and magick gave her a sense of reclaiming the loneliness, being snubbed and disregarded, but on her own terms.

In the attic of a popular bar called MANIPULATION, Pax was talking with Mariah about her new coven interests. Pax had fifteen years experience with magick and understood the craft ethically. Mariah had about seven months under her faux leather sash and with much delusion felt she could pull off any spell. They both held hands and practiced a new verse Mariah fostered:

Oh pacific drama

Cleanse my dream

No trouble or trauma

No lightless scheme

My body aired

My body rained

My heart cut square

Spirit retained

This out-of-bounds area in the bar was strange and it was Pax's veteran status as patron sanctioning her entrée. The exposed metal had rusted to a bone-white, making them feel like they roamed the skeletal cage in a building's form, or some strange giant. Buildings were just giants, chained to the earth, with insides toured by humans.

Pax felt relived to see Mariah relaxed. Both were mostly naked, wearing only silky kimonos, with Mariah in deep berry wine lipstick and Pax in a navy blue, matte and powerful. Pax recalled Mariah telling her about how her last spell done alone went so wrong while downstairs at the bar counter of MANIPULATION . . .

. . . "You know I love Mabon, it's my favorite day! That come-hither day, for me, you know, girl? Septembers were once very special months to me, but lately they were getting harder and harder to navigate through. I mean I was so glad I got into Wicca, after my suicide attempt, and I still can't believe you and Barbara and Beth came and saw me in the ward! I mean I'm really grateful, really, very grateful for you all. And so witchcraft helped me get back into a great motivational way to live. So with Mabon, we have that balance, you know, the light and darkness but of course the darkness is just waiting to take over come Xmas time. Yeah, I'm always grateful, for the completion of the harvest, the drinks you'd buy me, I had my sea salt, vanilla bean, grassy aromas to honor the Mabon wheel of our year. But fuck, I just fucked it all up so much..."

"What happened, baby girl?" Pax took another shot at the counter, while also buying one for Mariah.

"I added some cardamom, some fennel, and had some absinthe. I knew the upcoming winters were going to be hard, Pax, I knew it, that's how my suicide happened last year, you know?"

"I know, baby girl, we were there for you." Pax always had the best smile.

"And I'm very grateful. But like, my vituperative family, people out in public always staring and making rude jokes, you know, I just needed something extra out of my Mabon ritual."

"Did you cast an unrehearsed spell, Mariah?" Honest eyes with chin lifted.

"Well, my whole life is unrehearsed, that's always been my style. Spontaneity captured, I guess. But yes, I did a sigil. I mean, they always worked so well in the past and," Mariah was crying, very chagrined by it, "I wanted more pleasure in my life... fuck... I wanted more pleasure... but just to be happier, you know? Not in a selfish way... an olive branch to replace my difficult family... and all the politics fighting us, I mean... Christ... I just didn't want to fall back into depression again and again and again..."

"What was your sigil? Was it masturbation-based or what?"

"I wanted... well, pleasure. I wanted more pleasure in my life..."

"Oooh," suddenly Pax's eyes grew vast. She understood exactly.

"I think... I think that's how heroin came into my life... because I swear, like, girl, like four days later... I'm at the strip club and that motherfucker comes up to me, saying I look like I use heroin and I look depressed and I look like I want some pleasure in my evening, I mean, Jesus, St. Michael, the fuckin' archangel of fire came down, and heated me too good, too pleasurably, St. Michael of spoon heating. But I always wanted to be the one in my family who didn't use heroin. I wanted to be different, not like most of my family... I thought I was stronger..." Mariah kept crying.

Pax was holding Mariah's hand, pulling out two cigarettes for them to smoke outside in a few moments. Pax also ordered two cocktails, special drinks that happened to be named after Pax herself.

"I just... I don't know if I'll ever be the same... Pax... it's so hard... staying clean... everyone says you have to want it, but I've always fuckin' wanted it. I wanted it before I needed it. They don't understand."

"They don't, Mariah, I do, though. Please don't cry. You're too beautiful tonight, your makeup is so sex kitten!" Mariah laughed her laugh too adorable in Pax's eyes. She sniffed deeply, wiping away tears and snot. "We're going to find a cure, baby girl, we're going to find a cure," Pax was rubbing Mariah's back, with absolutely no clue what she could do to help her friend. Speaking nicely and being a good listener seemed, in the end, to be good enough for now . . .

The memory faded from Pax's mind as she saw Mariah lying back on the floor, staring out of the attic window at the firehouse beside the bar, of roman prominence.

"Isn't Joe Crate building a dungeon room right now?" Mariah asked rubbing her breasts softly, an unnoticed habit of hers. She seemed worried one day they'd disappear on her, after years of progress.

"Oh, baby girl, he's been pitching that fork for years. It's his latex shopping he needs to get under control." Pax went over to put on some clothes. She rubbed away some chalk designs of paws and thorny crowns. Pax put on a special amulet made out of bits of fingerite, such volcanic mineral magic blotting her scalp in times of muted mojo anxiety.

Pax went downstairs to the bar. Mariah claimed she'd come down in a little bit. As Pax made it to the bar counter she sat at the same spot she always sat. She ordered a vodka shot and some water. The crowd was healthy; regulars that loved Pax coming over to give their warming hugs.

At that moment the door flung open by a weight of willpower; Pax felt the aura and turned her head. In walked the motorway legend Jack Righteous, resonating like a detuned Dobro six string. Jack Righteous, the jack of all-trades, jack-hammering every school of trade, theory, t'ai chi, and tacamahac. Jackscrew the ripper with jacklight and jackknife: the sauntering jackpot, though he's been limping lately. Over the years, Jack's supple mania began to deteriorate. Once a legend of thought, now a troubled man with ugly mood swings. The Jack arch in every haunted pad; skin like oxidized steel, suspenders snapping in rhythm, Righteous came over to Pax. Jack Righteous, the poster firstborn for moonshine ambition, mad designs and akathasia, verbal, emotional, corporeal, literal, rational, dental: in all ways Jack lived on tenterhooks. A man forever keyed up, though he'd never suspect it's from the keys of coke he'd bump by the hour. The last time Righteous and Pax were together, she had bought the two champagne bottles in exchange for a creative literary night. And a hand job. Pax was cuffed with depression out of unconscious rudeness Jack Righteous famously spat out, usually at supervisors or misses he would like to bang: super irony man, Jack was, and super at it. The night ended with Righteous putting an empty bottle in the brown bag as a decoy, knowing Pax would likely try to slyly sneak out with the bubbling good stuff. "Oh my, how light this suddenly became!" Classic Righteous madness...

"Pax Romana! The sunniest seer of our Loki damned times." Righteous said coming over, pulling up a seat to sit next to her.

"It's Sokolov, by the way." Wait, Pax started thinking, maybe it's better Righteous doesn't know further info about you, Pax. These days Jack Righteous was exceedingly petulant, edgy, even violence was seeping out of his usual party-crashing work-conning manner. "How's the hustle been?" He had good days but when they were bad...

"All day, darling, all day," Righteous hid the social anxiety that suffocated him from all. It was obvious he was apprehensive, but according to him, mistakes were never made.

"I hope you're not going back to those streets. You're not working on Sumac Street anymore, right? Or Pisces Street?" Pax expected she'd have to buy Jack a drink and did and got one for herself as well.

"Briefly, darling, but you know the name of the game is get in and get the fuck out. Eh! Eh! Eh!" Righteous had quite a laugh, crossover between a liturgical wheeze and a dissolving chuckle.

"You said you wanted to talk tonight, your text, remember?"

"Yeah, well, if you had answered the fuckin' phone," Jack Righteous barely made five minutes in before being rude to the people who loved him, "I could have saved you the trouble." He sipped the cranberry-cherry-vodka cocktail Pax bought him. He thanked the bartender but not Pax.

"I'm sorry, sweetie, I just hate using phones. I try not to if I can. They just bother me. I mean, texting I can sort of do but talking is too much for me. Sweat comes on bad, looks like I'm standing in the rain. I think I might even get rid of my phone."

"Off the grid, out of dodge, I can admire that. Well, my concerns aren't too academic, but god damn, you know, can you get back problems from sleeping in a manger?"

Pax shook her head to say no, when she had no clue, "might be a bit smelly, I would assume," smiling.

"Yeah, funny you say that, I'm also, lately, working on an antiperspirant company, called AZRAEL'S GARLAND, all fetor eliminated or your money kept and used to buy white girl to be railed. Eh! Eh! Eh!"

"So what's up?" Pax was tired and was trying to recall if white girl meant cocaine or meth. She could never keep up with slang, but pretended she could.

"I need you to tell me my future for the next week..."

"You know the impediment reaction you get everytime we do this, Jack."

"Yeah but my roommates are up to something fishy. Real fishy, you can smell it. Everytime they come home at dawn. Doesn't smell right, Pax."

"Better call Azrael instead." Pax grinned a bit, and then recalled whom she was talking to. With Jack Righteous, you had to feign a hug and compliment and send him on his way, otherwise he'd cling to your evenings like a herpetic outbreak.

"I need some direction, Pax, I need... something to guide me. You're incredible, your dreams, your visions, the burdens they lift from us, well, from me at the very least. I need a vision of what my house is becoming, what's happening to it, who is trying to invade it... something isn't right in this house... I think a bad spell was placed on it... I need some hint, ok? I'm gonna pick up some crystals to place outside of the house. A hint at the very least about if I should get the fuck out of dodge, or dodge a few fuckheads before they set my home ablaze."

Pax had taken out from her pocket a bunch of dead flies. She held them tightly. She looked like she switched into meditation all effortless. Red, gold and purple dots, tossing as beams of light from outside on the road, inside of the bar, people coming in and going out, white cellphone screens flashing bright every few seconds, the twilit taste of lemonade cooling every cell in Pax's body, the lights, such lights, real lights fluctuating across the room. Righteous glowered at her breasts, then back at her face. She flew along the timeline of Jack Righteous, all while peaceful in her chair at MANIPULATION; this carbonizing oracle, haunting her company with truth from the future, taken like contraband back to her present, information snuck out of a plundered and proscriptive state. Righteous felt the presence of a human AC unit. "I can... I can see your place... next to an abandoned warehouse... a chemurgic bust... at some point in the future... a man with... his son visiting... staying a while... a woman there, too... she's trying to distract the son... from what his father's... buying... oh it's... it's Mariah..."

"Mariah? The trannie, Mariah? The junkie?"

Pax was annoyed at the interruption, and the hurtful slur. She took in a merciful breath of air, her windpipe straining out the churlish notes, "and I... I see Mariah... she's smoking crack... with you... you're both smoking crack... and a bunch of others are... you're making... a joke about... the place... calling it... The Trap and Palette... for artists... and... drug addicts..."

"I can't be around that type of addict though. Blow and molly are ok, not smack," Jack lied.

"It's ok to love an addict. Most don't love what they're addicted to, and many became addicts out of the lack of love in their environment, their childhood."

"Am I getting a blowjob?" Jack asked.

Pax opened her eyes, laughing that plentiful and beautiful laugh she had. "I'm serious about what I just saw," she shifted back to a somber tone, "damn, I'm worried about telling Mariah. I don't want to give her any excuses to use, or relapse sooner than I guess she was partially destined to."

"I saw her the other night. She was a sobbing mess, unbelievable. I had to bail on her. Couldn't handle her victimizing herself like she always does," Pax examined both sides of that story then, Jack's version now and Mariah's version the other morning.

The complexities of divine circuits gave Pax something to obsess with, and that was always what she needed the most. Something to be obsessed with, some language she could master and fluently use to provide for others, to tell others how much she loves them, with words they know. But time-travelling was a bitter language, birthed by dialectal parents of anathema and tokophobia. The further down a timeline Pax flew, the more it took out of her, to the point of hipshot chills out on the thermal wheel of it all.

"Are you suggesting I bail out of this house now before it gets worse?"

"Well it won't be now, you're going to be partially caught, but I don't know for how long." For girls like Pax, any talk of the political was ducked at all costs. They knew one thing for certain was the inevitable private disaster all would face one day. Liars hoping for a god, to lay down a lifetime of experienced fraudulence, ultimately used upon the creator of liars. But no, it was always the mirror, the final judgment from within, the only person you can't lie to, no matter how much of your life you practiced telling lies. Facing the self was scarier than facing god. No matter what, guys like Jack felt they could simply soothsay their way around debt or dying.

"Any images of my future among the crime bosses locally?"

"I see... I see a type of square..."

"Oh shit, like Palace Square, St. Petersburg, the violence?"

"No... something different..."

"Tahrir Square? Egypt? Rape?"

"No..."

"Taksim Square massacre?"

Pax opened her eyes with frustration.

"What the fuck does a square have anything to do with this?" Jack suddenly felt bad and ordered a shot for the two of them.

"Être à côté de la plaque..."

"Plaque? Like the sticky deposit fuckers on our teeth?" Righteous mocked smiled, giving Pax a chilling feel. "Go back to the square part, I mean, squares, they have a unique thingy in history, especially around riots or revolutions. Tiananmen square? Is that what you see? Am I in Japan?"

"Beijing... China..."

"I'm in China!?"

"No... That place was in China... the square of heavenly peace... but I see... made man... or... being made..."

"What? I'm already a made man, I make the men, Pax, don't jap my timeline," Jack's disruptions hurt Pax's insights, weakening her channeling, thus convincing Jack this was a waste of time. He wouldn't say sorry though, he'd only try to be a teensy bit nicer some other time, believing how on point his decisions and remarks were, no matter how on edge he made his friends feel. Men, Pax realized, at least the men in her life, were inherently unable, and unwilling, incipiently unbuttered: Men didn't know how to say sorry. Their pride would be their undoing, their unclasping, apologies were too uncomfy. They'd rather die by pride. Scare by greed. Destroy or become destroyed by lust. The drugs though, and Jack Righteous was no stranger to self-medicating from black market nutritionists. But these were different times, the new designer drugs, the classic street drugs, I mean, Christ, they're shared by both perverse producers and by dreggy addicts. They're planning to take over the world. The big worry of Narcoterrorism, though the repeated newsreels of black thug and tan jihadist and all the young liberals reducing criminal records and opening up the boarder, but all of them are on the crosshairs, black thug, tan terrorist, white cop killer, Asian campus shooter, Latin party dissident, angry violent whitie; none were free from the firing squad. All lined up, at their local square, waves of violence, all addicted to their proposed ataraxia. All were targets, by a very few, the very few having removed their empathy. They may throw down some nights, when you're at a party snorting coke. But they're not driving you home. They're not going to help you with the comedown.

Pax was in the bathroom of MANIPULATION having a mental breakdown. She began cutting her wrists, regardless of the any walking in, or quickly exiting the toilet.

"Girl.. is... is that a bread knife? It's so rusty. Stop it... you're getting blood everywhere..." A stranger said, slowly, almost afraid to intervene or interrupt the unhidden self-mutilation.

Pax turned her face to the stranger, eyes a stormy cyclone, with lashes buzzing. Pax had glued flies to her lash-line; Pax had flies for eyelashes, buzzing mad at the buzz-kill stranger.

PAX / COLLEGE YEARS (A lesbian love triangle beating her square-heart)

Pax in leatherette, in sparkly teal lipstick like a face that was choking, this was the night Pax met Olivia.

It was never uncommon for girls in college to do anything but study still Pax was perspicacious, with humor quick-witted, but math seemed to slow her down. She found herself attempting to improve her math skills at work, though if the scenarios happened to outdraw her, she'd land in hot water, usually giving the wrong cash to a customer during a sale, having a cash register drawer short, a write-up, a shift cut, a last warning; Pax gave up on math, but this was by no means unusual for an artsy girl, or any American, really.

Olivia was chicer than any on campus and her Comanche bloodline informed Pax -upon adorable first-love research, err, semi-stalking?- of their population's acquiring of horses, their stern resistance to white settlers, their name's translation to 'strangers.' Little Pax, having shown no real interest in learning or updating her insular ways in high school, was falling in love with diversity, and falling in love with this tall woman in kush-green over-the-knee boots. Leatherette. Just like Pax. This could work out, Pax felt... she'd just have to learn to like girls.

"I swear sometimes you're so queer,"

"Mom!"

"What!? It's true! Pax, honey, the makeup, the clothing, the places you go to, freakish, all those weirdos, you wanna be a weirdo, Pax!? Everyone everywhere will think and immediately know, there goes a weirdo!"

"You don't have to say queer though. I mean, c'mon, I'm just different." Pax had stopped home only briefly to pick up new shirts, socks, underwear; all those things moms still bought for kids long after the phases of being a youngster. "Can't you see this is how the world is now, Mom, people are just different."

"People have electronic gear in them, Pax. Cyber-lungs? Are you kidding? You know the terrorists will find a stunt to hack those! I mean, heavens to Betsy, cybernetic? This was Hollywood garbage when I was a kid. Now I have to worry about my own kid growing up with cyborgs, trying to hack and silence all calls to police stations nearby during a gang-rape? Is that even the right word? I'm so disoriented," Barbara began to whisper to herself, "disorient, orient, oriental, ORIENTAL," now she was yelling, "that's another thing! I can't say oriental anymore! Mariah was telling me that at work, how it's wrong."

"Well, it's derogatory," Pax was stuffing her clothing into a military-themed duffel bag, "can't you just refer to people as... people?"

"Do you see what I'm standing on?"

"Yes..." Pax! Abort! Leave house now!

"This is a rug."

"Ok." Bag tied. Everything ready to go.

"An oriental rug."

"Mom..."

"No, no, stop it, all your queer circuit raves can wait. I want to teach you a life lesson about reality." Barbara was yawning halfway through her own sentence. She clearly was at a point where she'd do anything to keep Pax around longer. This wasn't a motherly seminar on orientalized textiles, this was Barbara's attempt at clinging to her daughter she maybe joked too much about kicking out of the house.

"I have to go, but I promise I won't buy any fabrics from any queer cyborgs. Please be careful about the words you use, Mom. I sort of don't care but you don't want to upset anybody else in the world, right?"

"So when's the next time you'll be visiting us, Pax?"

"I promise soon. I have to focus on my good grades. I want a good career, you know." Pax took a long look around the kitchen, especially at the table. I know you'll be away for a few weeks, right? Down south with aunt Beth?"

"That's right, you can come back here if you want to sleep without noisy roommates then, but you have to still study. And no queer parties!"

"Mom..." Pax was a bit upset, hearing the word repeated so many times. Pax couldn't tell anymore which of its many definitions Barbara was applying to Pax. "I am totally grades-focused."

"Well, good. Keep 'em up, the good grades or I might pull the rug out from under your queer toenails," Barbara was grinning.

Pax felt some guilt at never appreciating the foreign exchange students in high school. Kids from Europe, or Hong Kong, Venezuela, Chile, South Korea, none of these places seemed important to Pax amidst the cold blood comments she'd be hit with by students in the hallway, other girls teasing her body figure in the locker-room. Even the style of underpants Pax wore was enough to be mocked; such sulfate words, rubbed in her eyes, jammed in her ears, perhaps enduringly leading Pax to adopt a smeared and smudged black-hole eye palette. Olivia, for whatever reason, liked this. Or maybe liked seeing Pax in her panties in the locker room? And yet here was the faculty more worried about Mariah's intentions, because all the other cis-girls were so uncorrupted.

Olivia liked Pax. But Pax was dating another girl, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had met Pax at her job, as a 911 dispatcher, there was something in her voice, completely captivating Pax whom at the time was dealing with menacing constipation. Not the most flattering icebreaker, though once it has passed, bellies certainly appear flatter. Elizabeth had heard it all. So many calls of penises caught in places no penis was envisioned to visit. Even Mariah found herself a regular in the ER, from so many bad combinations of mixing heroin with cocaine or angel dust or whatever managed to take the self-street-healing up a notch.

It reached a point of Pax finding any odd issue worth calling about, the oil of her love distilled from a pure chase, her flowers of passion. Pax hadn't seen the face of Elizabeth yet but knew there had to be a way for them to meet, to date, to bang like Bolsheviks on greater doors; sex on a door, Pax, you flouting flapper.

Woe was this girl who doesn't like girls but ends up with too many: straight people problems, aye?

"What are you going to do about Elizabeth?" Olivia had been looking at a picture of Elizabeth through an internet search. She was feeling an incapacitating guilt, as she enticed Pax for a resplendent affair.

Elizabeth had breasts so buxom they could build an empire; her natural freckles mimicked by makeup artists in these times, effervescent hair like ginger beer, the gingerer the better for Pax, still denying any lesbianism in her soul. This was all just normal college phases, living bi, parties with Shias and Sunnis and Sikhs but protesting in the name of a Laïcité system, waking up to marijuana and financial aid cereal. This was how the young adult USA curve twisted, and with any luck she'd return with sturdy memories and few STIs.

"She's very... beautiful.. this... this Elizabeth girl..." Olivia was saying, the guilt, she began to assume, would become a tour of duty for her. "Seems like a nice, simple girl. Taking 911 calls, helping the people, I like that," she examined her body in the picture.

"I know. I mean, I'm open to a three-way relationship," Pax tried to add.

"I'm really not, though. I want to be with you Pax, I don't want men, and I love the way you smile, you have such a sweet, smile," Olivia was whispering. Mariah used to say Pax smiled just like her Aunt Beth, the same pout, born in an orchard, but tomboyish enough.

These weren't halcyon days and nights by any means. Pax's schizophrenia had been worsening over the years and she found herself hopping from Rx to therapy to Rx to psychoanalysis to Rx to hardcore isolation tank to Rx to Rx to Rx... Aunt Beth and Mama Barbara found this period difficult. Pax had her stints of stays in psychiatric wards, a parapet of alcoholism. Any salubrious testing Pax attributed to sigil spells of armor and she even had uncanny habits where she'd purposefully harm herself to prove how healthy she really was, sometimes claiming she made a deal with a demon for superior health. This time period Pax developed, in addition to worsening schizophrenia, a fear of being stared at, and a worsening fear of using phones.

"Honey, how are the grades going?" Barbara asked from her home kitchen, going through an old box of 'job mementos' from places Pax had worked at. The odd Dunkin Donuts visor hat, a Radisson nametag, but only the jobs she abided. Barbara was disturbed with her own odd fears, such as persistent anxiety over what the neighbors thought; not as literal as that at times, though her neighbors seemed to have better leverage over decorations than Pax or Beth did but in general, in public, it was always the damned public, Complete Strangers, Comanches -Kɨmmanči- they always knew best, folks who didn't know you at all. Their judgment spiels, be them harsh or benign, brought Barbara to laicizing her own amendments, euphoria, particularly having had a child so late in life, breaching her golden years but still forced to work due to the great expense of living, fighting, fight, fight, fighting the atrabilious yet somehow knowingly not fighting hard enough and unconsciously worrying the fighting might influence Pax wrongly; a mother forever panicking at a daughter known for seeking men of satyriasis. Moms never see the plain American equation, verboten by authority makes curiosity, but a parent that spoke to their children as equals, adults, now they had a better chance at solving any early dormant self-esteem issues shaped by abuse or pure neglect. Speaking of equations-

"I hate math."

Barbara clutched the timeworn uniform gear from Pax's old jobs. "Oh, ok, ok, honey, maybe you could meet with a tutor? Help you with your skills?" In the memento box was a sheet written in Russian, roughly talking about the, 'big jubilee search.' Something Mikhail maybe wanted to show Pax at a later age, back when he flirted with the idea of still being around and flirted less with motel lassies.

"Yeah, I'm seeing this one tutor right now," Pax stared at Olivia's neck, her ears, the side-parted hair. "Beautiful tutor," Pax said.

"Beautiful?" Barbara asked, slightly confused.

"Oh, yeah," Pax felt Olivia push the wheels of her joy, satisfaction however cracked or dubious or inappropriate. "Oh, she's very... dexterous," Olivia was fingering Pax's asshole while Pax tried to end the phone conversation with her mother, "so I guess I'll come by another nite when-"

"Uh, Paxie, I wanted to talk to you about a few more things 'bout these ambulance bills, Pax, you know, my tax money goes towards all this! I'm paying for these when you're only dealing with constipation issues, I mean, do you even know what a perforated bowel is, Pax? Imagine what the neighbors thought seeing an ambulance come here that night when I had BOTH of my cars in the driveway! That's so rude and humiliating and," Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Time was growing humorless for Pax. Her time with Elizabeth felt too full of bickering, schematics, and a trout-tinted bottom part that Pax was growing bilious over. Not that she was one to talk, Pax, the girl who'd probably eat her deodorant before using it to clean her armpits.

So with the zeroing in on the joyless stage of Pax and Elizabeth, just then at Panera Bread bakery, places where Americans never seemed happy. No matter the food choices, tea choices, quickness, coupons, gift cards - Olivia showed Pax communities she once lived in. It had quite the effect on Pax. Some in poverty yet rejoiced by community. Some in wealth yet motivated to share.

"How's your treatment going?" Elizabeth asked, grudging through soup.

"Not bad, not bad. Always buying new posters with motivational phrases or proverbs and all that."

"Do we have the money to be buying new posters all random?"

Do we have the money for this bourgie lunch? Pax thought but was too scared to say aloud. "I guess not. But they work! I mean, it's like a mental health purchase, really, I was thinking about getting some for you, honest."

They just didn't fit. Elizabeth, though working for hospitals and police and firefighters, had no superhero complex. Another type who imagined if it wasn't her job to help somebody, then help came not by her. Elizabeth was more dahlia dress. Pax was more railroad station tracks. One leaned for Mediterranean luncheons, the other leaned for shamans and climbing windmills.

"I'm trying my absolute hardest, I've been reading some shadow books, some Crowley, some Austin Osman Spare, I'm searching for the light, the pure light, the answer, the hidden meaning," Pax said.

"K, ok, and doctor checkups?"

Pax gave the pucker of the century. Her anxiety over doctors seemed to give Elizabeth anxiety herself. "I know. I'm trying. Isn't that good enough?" Pax tried to hold Elizabeth's hand but it felt too stiff, in fact, if Pax had closed her eyes, she could have sworn she was holding onto the baguette they had ordered. A tasteless, passé, stale baguette... Liz was al fresco. Pax was réchauffé.

"Your eyes resemble bells to me... you know that?" Pax had texted Olivia. There was gin on the table, beer in the fridge, cooked eggplant fries, sour cream, all alcohol and dishes and plates covering a table of rejected math homework, all in the name of a loving date night.

Now it was time to send Elizabeth the message: the farewell message. Pax planned to do it through text. She and every other human these days: all face-to-face exchanges were saved for AIDS specialty doctors or the mob.

Pax tried to be delicate. She was usually. With Beth, with her mom, with Mariah -GOOD LORD- poor Mariah was sensitive to a lamentable level. But this was it. Pax was leaving Elizabeth for Olivia. She always wanted to be straight about that, or be straight about not really being straight, but at this point that didn't matter; time to keep a straight face, Pax.

An hour went by and Pax saw there was no reply as she sat at the table, sipping the gin. She began to panic about it, Wait, wait, wait a deerstalking second, Pax, what? What did you just text her? Pax was thinking to herself, shifting in and out of speaking aloud to herself and thinking intensely to herself. Why would you send something so idiotic!? Bells!? The fuck does that even mean? God, you're so weird. You're a weirdo, Pax. Saying strange things. You're so queer. Why are you even trying to get with girls, you're straight, Pax!? You want to lead them on and then break their hearts? God, I don't even think Elizabeth has a heart anymore. Funny, having a job where you save lives can make you so... annoyed? Ahah! That's life now, right?

"Hey. Honey. I'm sorry. But I'm, I'm not going to make it tonight," read the text message Olivia sent to Pax.

"Oh baby girl, it's okay." What the fuck!? "I did just open up our gin though, you know, it's real nice! High-end! High-brow! Like your beautiful brows, babe! Your cupola brows to your eyes like bells," God, what did I do? Was it the 'bells' text? Oh fuck, oh fuck me, someone come fuck the fuck out of me...

"Have the gin yourself, dear. Treat yourself tonight. Take care of yourself. Make sure you stay medicated, honey. You have a serious condition. If you treat it, you'll come through all of this just fine." Is this goodbye? Like this? Right now? Before the gin and beer!?

Is this goodbye, Olivia? Is this... goodbye... Elizabeth? Pax in a trance saw the two kissing behind her back. Of course, of fucking course, right, Pax? P leaves E for O but then O leaves P for E. Pax was done with triangles at this point. Henceforth, her heart would take a square shape.

Curse said aftermath for Pax, she whose math work witnessed the whole flopped tryst. Pax wants to live after math, literally, with no aftermath, without being stuck with ugly inner voices absorbed from former ugly outer voices, a troubled youth taking shape years on, still here is a very decent magnum of gin that was formerly a wine bottle, and her pain, Pax's Loki-Damned pain but with an inability to call 911 for fear of a recent ex- answering her emergency... nice work, Pax. Just go the rest of the semester without any injuries, righto? Now you're really suffering, by iron hands in velvet gloves, by too many irons in fire, by painful irony...

Within a few moments, Pax went under a systemless transportation, a soporific captivation. If conscious enough, Pax would likely be glad no hot girls were around to notice this spell, no horny paramedics busting in to check her fever... Pax was riding a subway called LUNACY, with the many stations being points in time, in her high-pressure life: the scheduled stops for this metro being history itself.

"I swear she's on drugs," Barbara said, in a slightly jovial tone, though still considerate, but a hint of sadness in her tone as well. Barbara's tone was a weird complex salad, where each spinach piece and cauliflower floret had its own agenda at lunchtime, some pieces plotting with the dressing, others surrendering with the romaine, girly Romans hip to their salad empire's digestion.

"Well, you know, I always tell ya Barbara," Beth began, "I had to adopt a tomboyish personality for her, she never had proper male figures in her life," Aunt Beth was cutoff by Barbara, something that happened regularly when they were out eating lunch at salad bars.

"But why the constipation? My god! Imagine what the cashier at grocery stores think, seeing this young healthy girl buying all these laxatives, or probiotic nonsense. I'm about to be sixty-nine," Barbara had her only child late in life, "I AM THE ONE who should be worried about constipation and blood in the urine. And she won't even share the medicine with me! Typical druggie, they don't share!"

The waitress bit her tongue as she refilled the water glasses, hoping the watery clash with ice cubes would damper any overhearing.

"No, no, she isn't on drugs," Mariah added, whom apparently had also gone out to eat with Beth and Barbara, "I actually don't have many male figures left in my life, Beth. My brother, father, step-father, uncle, they all turned their backs on me." Mariah had seen the two eating and they offered her to pull up a chair. "I've never once seen her use drugs. Maybe pot. But I mean, c'mon, that doesn't count." And Mariah sometimes offered Pax drugs and Pax always turned it down.

"Now they've got those electronic Smart-Bongs, geez, Apple really got on that market at the right time." Beth did her classic bug-eyed stare up to space.

"What a world I brought my daughter into..." Barbara seemed depressed. Nobody at the table asked her if she was. She immediately ordered a German chocolate torte; the pleasant cake wore a coat of coconut and pecans chopped by a platinum axe, dished up so warm, rained on by sauce. "Stressed spelt backwards is desserts!" Now Barbara was happy. At least for the moment.

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (Mariah at a party)

"Hey, Mariah, have you seen the light?"

"Aw, I'm sorry, but I can't tell...."

"Oh, is it too hard to tell?"

"No, I can't tell, it's a secret."

Mariah winked, her eyes glinting more than her dewy eyeshadow, joshing the men in suits, and they loved it. But in truth she did not, in fact, know. Had she seen the light? The idea shook her up, chasing enlightenment when it was already obtained . . . she was unsure about most things, usually, though out of habit wanted to be entertaining at all sunsets and sunrises.

Mariah leaned down to snort a champion line of cocaine. She found it frustrating to still be snorting, after having switched to intravenous intakes. She found nothing compared to shooting coke or crack once you've converted to the first-church of the spike (she imagined the Lance of Longinus injecting her gear, so high, so holy, she'd never come down). The bars and strip clubs had closed. Mariah was tugged alone to an after party for a local dealer, DJ Mick Munch. All showing up had to throw cash into a jar by the doorway where this fourth floor concluded, but Mariah, having hitched with them at the strip club beforehand, and the bar before that, slyly floated into the party, white rails left and right supporting her and anyone's night approaching: always enough to go off the rails.

Everyone liked Mariah. Some felt bothered by the type of person she was, but her genuine attitude made all know she was nonthreatening, and at the very least, flat-out polite. Perhaps a bit of a pushover, it wasn't hard to see the submissive traits in her eyes. Among the railers were young men in suits claiming they just attended the funeral of a friend who had turned to suicide one week prior.

"I just can't believe that shit," Mick was saying, chopping up some white girl lines, "he literally condemned us all in his final Facebook post. Is that how you go out? Leaving us tormented for the rest of our fuckin' lives?"

Mariah was writing a poem down, post-nitrous hit. She quickly shoved the paper in her designer jeans. "I'm so sorry, guys, really, this must be a very tough time," Mariah said, while twirling the hypodermic needle in her pocket, neurotically.

"He was such a big traveller, going to other countries, helping teach athletic programs to so many," another suited mourner said. "He had a business," he turned to Mariah and she could tell he was very drunk, "he had this business where, in his business, he taught kids... uh..."

"Business?" Mariah said and many laughed.

"No, no, ...in Ecuador?" guy looked up at the ceiling, as if the ceiling would assure him he pronounced the country's name correctly, "oh, we were all so proud. But jail. He was too afraid of jail. Fuck. I miss him, real bad. I used to ignore his texts some nights. Maybe I could have saved him, helped him out, just by replying, you know? The little things that save lives..."

"That's what happens to the very, very nice among us. We get resentful because we're always so nice, so cheerful, but then there's a cultivating wrath within, at the lack of niceness in response to our exhausting and committed niceness."

Committed niceness, committed suicide... maybe some people need to be less committed in life? Mariah was thinking, and feeling guilty at her thoughts, unsure if they were rude or interesting.

"But to say all this shit about us? Right before dying? That's how he gets in the last word? Before killing himself!?" Mick added then snorted two lines, and began to pass the scaly mirror around.

"Did he suffer from depression?" Mariah asked, as she leaned in to do her lines, "God, looks like I have cloudy gills," she uttered quietly looking in the mirror, sniffing madly.

"He was afraid of going to prison! That was it!" Another mourner added.

"He talked about that all the time," another mourner added.

"He was afraid, full of fear, I mean, we should be more empathetic about this," added Mick's girlfriend Latisha. "He was only thirty-years-old. He had a great life, with adventure, with," Latisha snorted her lines, "with, I mean, shit, this is tough..."

"Why was he going to prison?" Mariah asked.

"No, no, no, no..." everyone started saying. Mariah felt awkward at asking in the first place, breaching clearly a personal or legal matter that none wanted any further knowing. She wanted to attempt to slip some cocaine into the bathroom so that she could bang a speedball in her arm. The crowd here was, for the most part, good-hearted, but needles always changed the drug parties; there was always that one prissy pietist who'd brag over MDMA rolling and blunt smoking faux-weed, maybe bath salts for crying out loud, but if the 'H' word came out, ewwww... That one word, that one shining sliver of silver that nobody wanted to see you work, or be told you'd be back in fifteen after working.

"I'm just saying... that shit was not cool. Going out like that? I loved him and..." Mick was opening up his heart, but Mariah couldn't stop thinking about drugs. Her disease, addiction, it was a behavioral disease; a steep fierce obsession to think, speak, to take drugs, in spite of all wisdom taught over the years over how it will kill you, or worse, keep you alive and enslaved. Thus, like any addict, Mariah thought about drugs all day, and wanted to talk about drugs all day and at night? Use, use, use, use, use, use... she very cowardly, from the shadows of her ideas thought that the game of drug use might be a game that could be won. Most reach a point, they tell themselves how they played a game that couldn't be won but she always felt there was a way, a way to use and win and find enlightenment. Sure she'd turn to any justification. Theophany but as a dealer, in the streets, steamed white shirt... Mariah was no blinkered dilettante, panting and calling her mom at the immediate glacial beak jabbing out her pupils.

Mariah's habit came at fourteen but she was reaching a point, over a decade later, of come to Jesus, come to any apostle, really, any holy figure, whore or banker, a motherfucker fisherman could be the one that saves her at this point.

Somehow theosophy came into her book queue; a knowledge of god beheld through spiritual ecstasy. Mariah began to see herself as a latter-day theosopher, the wise concerning god. Mariah knew if she, like a perfected tea dosage, steeping, and in monastic household, could concoct the definitive drug combo. She'd loved the white girl and skag boy for speedballing, heroin mixed with cocaine. The girl and boy fucking in her brain was a madness blitz, a majestic obsolescence, taking the first mouthful from the first well: earth, day one. That was how speedballs felt to Mariah.

Nearby at the party some lilted men were talking about getting a phencyclidine contact, reminding Mariah of the one time she did a fireball: heroin mixed with PCP. By eavesdropping, she learned the contact lived off Twinge Street, in the city.

"Aye, I think we can get a good PCP contact in Philly. Or New Hampshire? If this local one fails on us, you know."

"Maybe's previously non-violent people turn completely violent."

"Come off it, you chancer wanker. Did the DEA's website teach you a lot, there?"

Phencyclidine was addictive, something Mariah hadn't anticipated. It's no laughing matter when you're coming down from it. Like a square cocaine rampage, you'll be chewing the back of your own knuckles and with body temps so fluctuated your clothing disperses by thought alone.

"What's a chancer?"

"Anybody using any chance to look smarter than everybody else."

"Howz a bit a fireball shoot-up? Aye?"

"Mmm. So that's heroin and PCP together?"

"Aye. That's correct."

"Not bad. I bet the skag can kill the fear feeling in the dust, right?"

"I never really had the fear feeling. I always felt immune to pain when I was dusted. As if my body was changing sizes, sizes I didn't even know existed, like a new measuring system or something like that, such a powerful trip, but so easy to fuck up. Maybe you've got a point." The man had a mechanical device implanted into his right elbow, it turned from a piercing larkspur blue to a daffodil gold. The odor coming north of the cybernetic implant -his nongadget pits- smelt horrendous.

"Yeah, no fuckin' shit, faggot. It's like I'm talking to a fuckin' travelator. Just keeps goin' slower and fuckin' slower while babies scuttle to their jets faster."

"Babies on jets..."

This wasn't a drug like others. Not as popular, and had a bad reputation. Once an anesthetic for veterinarians, but some people hated DXM rides. Everybody had his or her or their drug, contrary to the gateway diagram. You could easily find those turning down the worst of the crops ought of respect for what is their drug and what is simply not, but for real addicts like Mariah, using was a compulsive habit, using anything; she nearly lost her hormonal replacement therapy after taking estrogen through anal insertion. The buzz was always explored for, addicts like adventurers going out to sea, to see if god's wisdom was waiting the whole time, checking every wave, every shipwreck route, be them folklore or not; the treasures of using were out there, addicts felt.

Mariah was a heroin celebrant. Though crack was a great distraction, and LSD made her feel like Bob Dylan shielded in glitter and tinsel, it was heroin that offered her what she needed when turning to drugs. All other drugs turned on her then, turning their backs, then the friends and coworkers turning their backs on a girl with a disease, this girl with many variables stacked against her. But, could she deny this secret rampage within, this desire to destroy all the success in her life? Was fear responsible for that self-sabotage? Oh... tricky... tricky...

Mariah had been working on something she titled a thunderball shot. With all the ambition of an owner of a craft cocktail bar, Mariah tested it all, having faith that it'd be a trio of drugs, a holy trinity of using. She couldn't, however, rely on harm reduction sites. In some phases of life, the only way to get answers was to experience them firsthand.

She drifted back into Mick's conversation, feeling immense guilt at having zoned out so thoroughly. "So... yeah, you know... that's why you can't wear tennis shoes in Dallas. Plus, fuckin' Slug Steve, that bastard, he owes me work on my roof and my hammock park! That's another story though... you know? Shit. I'm going to miss him." Mick had poured everyone a shot of vodka. Mariah was always afraid about mixing alcohol with heroin, rehashing a time when she overdosed from the combination. Her thunderball masterpiece would be the opposite of an overdose. The higher-dose? The hyper-hit? A super-shot? The using to end all using? Just then... as if the word hyper summoned him... damn... did Mariah say it three times?

"JACK MOTHERFUCKIN' RIGHTEOUS!"

And he was here, the urban decaying legend himself; with a resume like the Dead Sea scrolls of North America. Straight from planet hopping, he smoothed into the room, with a hacksaw strapped to his back. He made his rounds, cheers, checkups and check-ins, then lopping a seat next to Mariah.

"How's the writing going, darling?"

"Oh, real good. I really love my poetry. I feel so much happier writing it."

"All day, all day, eh!" Righteous pulled a cigarette out of thin air, then a second one, knowing Mariah would request it. "You still writing about drugs all the time?"

Mariah grinned, "it's all I know. All I think about. I have one story about a cathedral I'm planning. More about sexual tension, instead of drugs or alcohol."

"When's that novel coming?"

"I know, I know, it's finished, and I love it, but I gotta do something with it. Right now it's really just collecting dust. Once I'm done I just can't stop writing new things. I can't stop. This intense compulsion to write, write, write-"

"And shoot-up."

Mariah flashed Jack a face of opprobrium. Jack and Mariah might as well have been married, the way they always magnetically came to each other, but never stopped getting on each other's nerves. Jack had a way of tenderly telling the whole world about Mariah's flaws and relapses, contrary to the fact that it was nobody's business but her own. Mariah never in fact told a soul about Righteous using heroin or crack. But no pain now, not now, she decided.

Mariah can't think about suffering, she can't think about pain, about scars, scabs, cramps, chills, puke, she can't think even for a second about diarrhea or migraines, for any hurt, any torture, influenza untreated, raw drug withdrawal, hangovers, anything bad or wrong to her mysteriously seemed right, seemed normal, a sickness that feels healthy; she suspected it all rose from the insensible, the unfelling, inert. Mariah has given up on where the suffering began, why she was shaped this way... why would any person think they deserve cruelty or severe hardships? Whom could the bastard be that tricked this girl into thinking it's better to think not at all? ...Such affinity for inferiority...

Success? Love? Salvation? Hollywood Endings? Where did the allergies to these arrive? Had someone planted them, and then that someone became suppressed? Was it simply bad luck on Mariah's end?

"Hey, I got paid yesterday. Let's buy some hard."

"You wanna go on a crack binge, trannie-baby?" Righteous had his typical uncensored tongue, his classic badland laugh, as if the laugh was purely token, Jack's own way of laughing around the grim galaxy he built himself, where the only saints left alive ride in flying saucers and brag about upcoming juntas.

Righteous forced Mariah to let him drive her car. Jack Righteous, occasionally praising Mariah's writing, but those halos always ended up being his round-the-clock smoke rings. Righteous chipped in some cash, Mariah roaring the lion's share. Many bags, convenience store visits for stems, blue rose plastics discarded, copper pieces bought, scummy bits burnt off: the crack pipe was made.

Mariah loaded up her rocky chip in her pipe, held in the smoke mega long, that feeling, any addict knew all too famously. Mariah was not the first St. Crack had come up and hugged, in its tight encirclement, hisses and all. In trembling cold, Mariah's limbs would lug to it, unlike tropical fruit, Mariah had no tough core, and she felt no kiss when crack hugged her, but it somehow managed to devastate her lips, fluttering lips full of sores, sores by stems, all stemming from abuse at some point shaping a life later on... how devastating.

St. Crack of cool cotton floral twilight, leaving Mariah on a floor, checking her pulse, coolly, sassy, with her gut tossing frantic any minute, the love it gave her in that high, a love it heisted from her heart first, reused love -used up, reuse, use, keep using\- Mariah only loving herself in such a short delusional duration, with months of her life erased away in flashes, all under St. Crack's smokescreen, under St. Crack's costly crackle bringing out the demon fiend in you, leaving Mariah tickled pink, on a floor, against a shut door, she feels St. Crack hug her like her mom used to hug her, used to hug him, she realizes from mom's perspective, only to evaporate, run away through its harrowing exit. Leaving like Mariah's mother left, the mother she still misses, the mother Mariah misses missing, though she's still around, that mother, with her arms that Mariah could never read, feel, interpret though Mariah loved them so much regardless of the burden of miscommunication, that mother too diseased herself to handle hugging or loving or seeing a child change so radically, seeing her own child put under pressure by the public, by the government. Mariah and her mother, a relationship she simply couldn't understand... a relationship she simply couldn't... crack? But life goes in these directions. No certainty for any. Mariah only wants St. Crack now. When St. Crack invades her lungs for those long moments, she feels her mother hugging her, her mother, though it's only that crystal peril, that black magick of St. Crack, whose gratification is so urgent, so motherly, Mariah is willing to heist every mother's savings account for more...

"Gentlemen, and ma'am-sir," Righteous said, annoying Mariah like any best friend could, "your forecasts from your favorite cowboy prognosticator," with that Jack Righteous pulled out from seemingly nowhere, tarot cards, giving one to each person in his dilapidated home. If you weren't using crack, you were snorting coke, and if you weren't smoking weed you were hiding in the bathroom, pretending you actually weren't constipated for a yelping second. You might even be mainlining something, needle fixation was so dire once planted, you'd shoot-up water just to satisfy urges from that ritual... or you reached a point where you didn't want to share anymore. For all his mentally ill faults, Mariah realized Jack Righteous always shared what he could with his mentally ill friends.

"Miss Mariah, your card," Righteous said, smiling. As Mariah held it, she noticed the bend to it, slightly left, down vertically, indicating its role in drug cutting, lacing, measuring, bumping, etc.

Her card was The Chariot. A man, adorned so posh in a great armor. The ride covered by blue curtains covered with white stars. He had a staff in his right hand, as he faced Mariah against a piss-yellow sky. Mariah noticed the man was facing away from the city, as if leaving, perhaps warning her that salvation would only come if she left the city? Or was this a sign Mariah would spend her whole life chasing something? Chasing God's wisdom or St. Crack's smoldering trainyard, or unpatriotic heliograms or passionate Vérité artwork? Was she born to chase?

"I hate when people talk about having good energy, or good vibes or any of that stupid bullshit," Mariah lashed out. Her crack withdrawal was bringing out a poisonous crankiness, a bitter nucleate caught between an order of tribalism and her placated libido... "Energies... what a joke! Those are people to avoid!"

"I believe in vibes and energy," Jack said lighting up a cigarette in his opal filter. "By the way, this new humidifier here? I love it!"

Mariah thought about the two sphinx models in front of the chariot rider. The cat-human hybrid reminded her of Pax, and some lullaby she once sang to Mariah amidst a bad spell of intoxication. Mariah thought about how some girl in Scandinavia believed she was a cat on the inside, the feline inland trapped in a human shell. This was a situation cited ofttimes by the opponents of transgender rights. Mariah felt so depressed, then, thinking about her father, her brother, about trolling conservatives. Sea levels of her depression rising, her sensitivity gauging the rise so much, while she -the chariot rider- on her candied galleon, gauche and all, trying to trade whatever she could for islands of painkilling, islands so high, hammocks so high, she'd be so high from her rising sea levels, rising sad levels, the water could never touch her. Not a mensch needed for confidence, comments of her Cressida lifeway unheeded or pardoned. Mariah knew no matter how much kindness she pledged, gossips of being honorable and virtuous were not interesting to anyone anymore. The high water of consumers brought all to the lone star status. Nobody deserved any help, no matter how powerless, mislead, misunderstood, no matter how mistreated; if you were not paid to help, you shouldn't be helping any at all, and how fucking dare you ask, you ask for help? You, yes you? ASKING FOR HELP!?

Couldn't you be different, Mariah? Couldn't you be the one that still bangs the drum of kindness? Wouldn't that be better than banging a needle in your hard-earned body? "So... Righteous..." Mariah lit a cigarette, "what does this tarot card mean?"

"They're all interpreted in a swarm of ways," inhaling from the lemongrass humidifier. "This is the third one I've had to buy. That asshole upstairs keeps stealing and selling them." Righteous pulled out a bag of cocaine, giving himself and Mariah and some random bum on the sofa a bump.

"But I mean, surely there's a card that has a very definitive meaning, you know," Mariah noticed all of Jack's hardcovers on the floor, about lettering for comic books, becoming a coleopterist, infamous troubadours, "isn't there The Card out there?"

"Have you ever considered paying homage to Persephone?"

"No, I haven't, well, actually I have. I did study Greek mythology a lot."

"Are you aware of Pax Sokolov's coven? Her time-travelling powers?"

"Of course, we're best friends. We've done protection spells on dance floors together. I see her all the time!"

A car had been pulling into the long driveway of the Trap & Palette, Jack's benighted home. "Fuck, fuck," Jack Righteous stood up, walking over to the window, "I need you to go into the third room in the hall upstairs. This is critical business, darling, and these types of men will be none too pleased at the type of girl you are. But I still love you, I promise. I may need your car later, too. Here, another bump!"

"S'nnh'ff! You recognized who they were just by the car headlights?"

"Mariah, I love you, but these guys won't. To be honest, they're the type of people who love no one." Jack looked outside again, "ok, they're coming in, go up to that room. Try to fall asleep. Take Xanax or something."

"I hate mixing that with my gear, knocks me out..."

"Go work on your thunderball concoction, then. But be quiet! And if I text you to leave the house through the window, don't fuckin' argue with me. Alright." Jack went over to the staircase door, unlocked it, allowing Mariah to go upstairs to the seedy set of rooms. She heard the door lock behind her. Suddenly she heard a sound, some paperlike material slipping under the door. She bent down and saw it was her tarot drawling, the chariot card. Mariah slipped it in her purse, found an empty room not too sticky and tried to go to sleep.

A dream came then, a recurring nightmare Mariah had. She's in an airport, or hospital, or old industrial school, or some warehouse, or a fancy futuristic outlet shopping mall, and it's fluctuating from empty to busy. These places, where there's supposed to be lots of people. That's what Mariah always loved, people, happy people, smiling people, healthy, safe, guarded, diffident, chubby, weird, perverted people. Anyone, she just loved people and being in places where there'd be so many crowds, a Puerto Rican festival, a Comic-Con in San Diego, a gathering of hippies, of bikers, she loved it all. The dream got ugly when the facilities for lots of people would turn empty, she'd see all these people she loves and wants to kiss, all fleeting, vanishing, avoiding her at all costs... a giant synchronized breakup. She's end up on the floor, crying, injecting heroin into her veins, cursing whatever vanity or stupidity brought her life to such sad flooding, every home fading into a mausoleum, a wet mausoleum.

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (Chanson at a picnic table)

"And all my own sins

Have been forgiven somewhere –

I don't even remember them,

I remember the sins of others."

-JACK KEROUAC'S 61st. CHORUS

It was in Pax's stomping ground, seen as hybrid between wilderness and greenbelts -budget suburbia- where one found otiose love. And you could find Pax at a picnic table, outside a flea-bitten convenience store, how inconvenient the location was.

A strong smell of animal manure surrounded Pax's neighborhood. She loved to see horses, reminding her of Mikhail. Sometimes, after enough vodka has turned Pax pie-eyed, she'd meander about the horse stables, ending the evening by picking apples somewhere. This lost goth girl, always telling mother lies, for any truth, no matter how benign, would cause her to fret, to argue, to make a scene so unneeded.

This was an area still unspoiled by the mass of screens and cameras that were regularly spotted by Pax when she visited Mariah's apartment in the city.

Sometimes Pax liked to imagine her father in a special carriage, two strong bold horses, galloping down the road towards her, her father so drunk but with horses the DWI risk was removed. She always wondered what happened to her father.

Pax had a pet Gila monster with her, baking quiet in the sun on the table. Her lizard friend, known as Chanson -named when Pax was learning French / should have been named venimeux\- was believed, in Pax's mind, to share her thoughts. Pax felt a link, some wavelength unseen, unwilling to be shown by any others that directly linked between her imagination and Chanson's decisions. Pax even claimed that Chanson helped her get approval for certain members in a coven she formed, termed Tempus Fugit: the flies of Time. By channeling certain environmental variables, and mental variables, and iron variables, they found by preserving their natural sick or healed states they could travel the archways of time. Pax suddenly saw she was receiving a phone call then from Jack Righteous, "GODDAMNIT Pax, where have you been? I am in dire need of some Jack-Pax time, or... or... some Pax-Jack time. Aye? Aye?"

"Aw, Mr. Righteous, I'd like that! How are things going?"

"Well, just rereading the DARK TOWER series, same as usual. A big thorn in my side lately has been my partner, whom I'm dealing white girl with, but this guy claims I'm not discreet enough."

"Oh, geez," Pax flicked her tongue out at Chanson. Probably not smart to reveal to non-users you're dealing cocaine, Pax thought, but wasn't going to say that to Jack. "Have you tried discussing this with him?"

"Shit yeah, scrupulously, I'm so on point with myself, full-throttle Jack Motherfucker Righteous, if anytime this bastard gets drunk at the strip club, starts screaming about 'nose beers,' which is just harebrained," Jack Righteous had a skeleton built from quicksilver, a mood like sailors punching in a dockyard, a sense of humor best described as, well, torturable? Apt, in the end; maintaining bonds with Jack Righteous was a tall order, and not for the faint of art, "Righteous is not conspicuous, no sir, ma'am, reptile, aye, is Chanson with you?"

"Yes he is, Mr. Righteous!"

"Ah, love it, all day. So I'm trying to find a good boy contact for Mariah these days. I'd rather she get back in a detox facility, but I know some of them don't know what to do with him, or her, fuck, her, her."

"She relapsed?" Pax was disappointed, though her dreams rarely backfired. Any boomerang shapes her dreams might have taken were simply put in cold storage. Once thawed though, like every other dream, "I had a bad feeling about this. I have a bad feeling about her."

"I know, but I don't want to get sidetracked. I'm still troubled by this coke-laborator of mine. The other day, he must of had an epiphany, because, out of the OD blue, this guy comes up and is like, 'Righteous, oh my god, Righteous, you were right all along. You're very discreet!' I swear, Pax, he basically kissed the ring. Eh! Eh! Eh!" Classic Jack Righteous laugh evolving into some shattered-glass-in-a-ballroom sound.

Pax wanted to ask if Jack was on speakerphone but she knew better. All she could do was pray for Jack's partner, pray he finds a new place to live and fresh phone number.

"Hey, I gotta split, new people to meet. Oh! The reason I called was because of a few lottery tickets that might benefit from your telepathist capacities. Let's schedule a meeting soon? And an intervention for Mariah! I care about her. I can't lose another friend. Plus, a trannie blowjob... Eh! Eh! Eh!"

Pax hung up the phone, and smiled. She imagined Mariah getting clean then, imagining the intervention working, where the hardest thing Mariah would take is oolong tea and even Jack Righteous getting a steady job and quitting his snowy habits, taking care of himself, holding a diploma. She imagined Mikhail getting clean wherever he was, going straight, steady on the wagon. Pax imagined Beth enjoying her time at an opera house with Mariah before she learned Mariah was a junkie and began to see her differently. A shame seeing that friendship break apart, Pax loved the idea of seeing her friends and family get along. Then Pax imagined Barbara not panicking about what everyone else thought, about what the neighbors thought, about what people in the car next to her car thought about her, not stewing over Pax's schizophrenia ignominy, her capricious psychotic episodes, roaming aimless tendencies; her breezy wanderlust magnified by sleepless fear, infernal voices and threatening pink elephants. Pax thought about people everywhere smiling, enjoying their lives, sharing the planet... people unafraid of creatures because they're hideous or poisonous or abnormal... Chanson crept closer to Pax.

So many people in her life with dependency problems... though really we're all addicted to something. It's never about what the substance is, checking your cellphone neurotically is no better than hitting a Smart-Bong every night. Any addicted habit can become a major problem. Though so many were convinced drug addicts only wanted to party. The old-fashioned didn't understand the pain they're running from.

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (Mariah begins withdrawals)

Too many bad things done... not enough deserts to measure one's urge for redemption... sitting at noon, with the patrons of sex workers... sleeping all day, a deep sleep to keep one's distance from the many broken hearts and charred oaths... Anti-Semitism back beyond genocide, even between progressivists, the enemy heavy within needs an enemy that has limbs... the special alliance some have -with harmony, with soft perfection- can't we say they're bragging? Wouldn't you brag as well? They don't know aloneness... and yet they never seem to loiter...

So much prose trailing Mariah's virginal thoughts, this lowly girl incessantly living in a concept album or graphic novel; her withdrawals were schooling their stripping trade winds, a mental fog rolling into her isotonic functions, a mental fog so windowless and prayer-proof. The withdrawals were worse everytime, Mariah, but you chose the assumption that instead you were just getting more experienced with them.

Stupid cunt.

She took a few Xanax bars she forgot she had stolen, anything to take the stupid off the cunt.

Mariah was sitting at a picnic table at her parent's house. Her parents were not home. It was very sunny. She always snuck into their house when they weren't around. Usually to steal some beer or coffee, but today, she's just getting out of the city. Trying to go cold turkey in the uptown meadows and uptown sunshine.

Her regular dealer had gone AWOL, as he did every six or seven months, always without a heads-up and always before a big comedown.

A phone call came, she couldn't read the screen too well, "hello?"

"Oh Jesus, if it isn't the sexiest drag queen on the eastern seaboard!"

"I'm not a drag queen, Righteous, I'm-"

"Oh yeah, yeah, fuck, I misspoke, don't go actin' like a victim now."

What do you want, asshole? "Hey, how are you?"

"Well, I know you messaged me last night about a boy contact. I didn't find a direct one yet," Mariah wasn't shocked at all, "but I do have a lead."

Those words caught her eagerness, having a lead, like a detective novel, "Oh, my god, I love you, I love you! Thank you! Jack Motherfucker Righteous!"

"That's right, you can't spell Righteous without JACK RIGHTEOUS!"

"Yeah. Ok?" Mariah was real confused now, "you also have 'jug artichoke' in your name."

"There's also words like thug, argue, racist, eater, geisha, hijack, irate, gosh, gush... lots of words in me, err, my name?"

Mariah also thought, 'I roughest Jack,' is probably the best anagram for his name. "That's right. A literal and literary wordsmith."

"Yup. So the lead, time's a-wastin', trannie baby."

"Lead the way, Righteous."

Mariah arrived at a cafe, finding Righteous with notepad, acoustic guitar, tomahawk, and a book about Ashkenazic bloodlines, as well as a bunch of local hip-hop CDs, swag stickers, and the works. He seemed so, innocent, Mariah felt. Like a young man trying to communicate with the world, overcome his bipolarity, find a wife, and do the paleo diet. Jack even had his humidifier with him. Oh, Jack, you're so cute. Mariah felt a strong crush on him, as if they should be married.

"Why don't we just focus on ideas, today, Mariah? You're writing has been getting better and better over the years. I want to get into that eBook erotica porn scene. There's money waiting for us there. We're on the cutting edge of breaking into the industry."

This was where Jack's heart got out of bed. From time to time, Jack would emerge, encouraging Mariah's creativity, her poetry, her storyboarding... He cared very much about her, but given his unstable orientation, he was liable to turn full bloodthirsty Gestapo any second. Moments catching Jack Righteous' open heart were, to Mariah, very inspiring, "well, yeah, after we score the lamb of mercy. Your lead may be our windfall, Righteous!" Mariah used her adorable smile to cajole a free honey ginseng green tea out of Jack before they left.

She extended her arm, handing her keys to Jack. In that moment, Jack, the tempestuous aggrandizing madman himself, built by incapacitating proclivities, seemed disappointed slightly, a slight look of sorrow in his eyes, a look of 'are we really going to keep doing this all our lives? Aren't we artists, Mariah?'

Mariah almost suspected that her recent talks about returning to detox and inpatient rehab were being lived vicariously through Jack. He often took his anger out on her, so it was not too mindboggling to think he would wrap and hang his hopes around her just as easily. They jumped in her car.

As expected, Jack Righteous had no real lead. He was just lonely. There was a street called Sumac Street, and nearby it Pisces Street. You could drive down those roads, and whether windows were up or down, people shouted, "Boy? Boy?" or "Girl? Girl?" Jack did at least have some very nice cocaine and gave Mariah a few bumps, cloaking withdrawals for a hot second. But his main bait-and-switch was getting Mariah's Nissan to run a bunch of errands, shakedowns, exchanges, payoffs, some crack buying of which Mariah got to have a small chip's worth. Of course she'd share her heroin with Jack anytime for him to blow. But the cocaine was good. Made the withdrawals disappear for a short time.

"I tried to contact Pax, about finding the right dealer. She won't talk about drugs unless it's some ominous brooding warning, you know?"

"I keep hearing about that collective drug thing, oh turn left up here."

"Collective drug? And please don't navigate me, hon, I have my spell-protected routes." Mariah wondered what Jack did to cast spells to protect routes he drove on. She loved his brain, his truly alternative way of thinking.

"Well, I don't blame her. Her dad was a huge alcoholic, plus she has her own alcoholism to deal with. And she's schizophrenic! I mean, Jesus, I can't imagine what that's like. I personally think she's a time-traveller. But the poor girl, it seems any men that get close in her life end up being drunks and abandoning her. It's hard to talk to her about anything because she always just starts talking about herself, and her problems. She literally sees into the future but won't let you talk about yourself in the present. Oh, try to make this light!" Mariah stared out at the busy midtown scene. She loved the buildings and people and hotdog vendors. She loved life in all its cadavers and cabarets, its skeletons and its skedaddling scammers.

"I know how to fuckin' drive, bitch!" Jack took a deep breath.

Alright, aw'rit, Mrs. Mariah, your husband Mr. Smack will meet you soon for a nooner wham. You'll just have to be very silent until then. Jack certainly had anxiety problems, and for his tough Viking spirit and face scars, he really was nervous about being on this street. This was the street druggies died, up and down, to and fro, and even at ten AM, a gun pulled in bright dawn light was not exaggerated or too preposterous.

"We're lookin' for our friends, lookin' for our friends," Righteous had a comical voice working, his way of avoiding the disastrous anxiety that'd detonate any tick now. And the cops -Holy Odin- what could be worse here, getting arrested and detoxing in jail, getting carjacked and stranded in a bright abyss, buying fentanyl or carfentanil-laced heroin, and dying on the sidewalk, moth-eaten, retch-worthy... Mariah, where did the suffering peak, in your life, to lead you to this? That lead you to following this type of lead? Poor soul- Stupid cunt-

One man that Mariah guessed was Hispanic shouted 'boy' at them. Mariah told Jack and they attempted to turn around on the street and head back his way. A cop pulled onto the road, and the dealer had disappeared among the thistles and thorns.

They kept driving on in the midday sun.

A very tall street dealer approached their car at a red-light. "Here's what you're going to do. You turn left up here at Rose. Ride it and then you going to turn left at Pisces, heading south you turn left on Twinge, past those h-bomb sirens they just installed. You ride that straight down to the end here. Ignore any other niggas shouting at you. You come to me. We meet between the two salons there."

"Ok, so left, left, then left back to here."

"That's correct," he said stretching his arms.

"Alright, so are we talkin' prime gear here?" Righteous was trying to get smalltalk but this man wasn't playing it safe.

"The fuck you stunting, of course. Move."

"Alright, see you in a second."

Mariah felt rather calm, but mainly from subconscious feelings that she pretty much deserved to die here. And the cocaine helped her. Plus she stole the Xanax from her dad's medicine cabinet the night before, because it's so stressful always teasing your daughter and what not... she wished he had Valium instead, mainly for cultural references, that's how bad art afflicted Mariah, even in death or agony, art was everything. Righteous was scared. Seeing him scared made Mariah very depressed. No comforting words would work here; she simply had to shut her mouth.

A weird tension began to grow here.

"Alright, so this is going to be the questionable stuff. I will do a test snort before you put anything in your arm."

Does he realize you can die from snorting, too? Mariah thought. Stuff like that should be spoken no matter how annoying it sounds, it's harm reduction, Mariah... life-saving advice shouldn't be withheld over the risk of sounding whiny. So many drug addicts don't know what they are up against. Your reliable faithful dealer who has such bomb H has never tried the shit. He's a pothead, making money off your addiction, but when you ask him if it's strong or pure or superb or cut; he doesn't truly know but he isn't going to say no. Snorting it wasn't absorbed the same, a lot of product was lost, but you could still get real high and you could still die from snorting.

Righteous had a phone call coming thru the car's system. "Oh, if it isn't my man fifty gram. What is up!?" Righteous had no discretion, esp. over his malfeasant transactions. "Did you get my recipe sheet for the tech student deals?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, we're gonna give 'em the bags with only vitamin B12 and caffeine powder. Works perfect, they have no clue, and none want to comedown so we just push that price up, up, up," Jack shouted as Mariah examined the billboards everywhere showing music videos, commercials, recent arrest made, et cetera.

"Oh!"

"Yeah, dude, honestly, I may have to talk to you later. You care if I get your car? My car at home is about to explode, and my lady friend Mariah is being a selfish bitch, and won't let me borrow her car for the weekend." Jack turned to Mariah with a happy smile and wink; she mutually winked back to pacify her madman friend.

"Oh, uh,"

"You know, I've got a crucial deal coming through right now so I'll call you back. Let me know about the car or if you know a repair shop we can bust into afterhours."

"Oh, ah, 'kah, peace."

They finally made it to Twinge, and were headed down the road; it was a one-way, no turning back here. Mariah had borrowed $40 from Pax a few days before and Jack had a few bills from a coke deal earlier in the morning, mostly kids still partying from the night before, feeling a massive post-acme and their touchdown might be calamitous.

"Keep comin' now," the man at the end of Twinge kept shouting, while others in lawn chairs shouted at the car as Jack and Mariah drove by; drug business everywhere, on every lawn, porch, street corner.

"Alright, where's it at?" Jack asked poking his head out, trying to be cool.

"It's right here," the man's voice was coarse, in essence and octave.

"Hold on, let me just see it first," Oh Righteous, your tone of voice, of all the times for it to turn so marshmallow.

"WHERE'S THE FUCKIN' MONEY AT!?"

"It's right here!" Mariah could hear Jack's testes falloff. She figured if she looked down at her car's throttle she'd spot them rolling around there. Jack handed the money to the man that happened to be foaming at the mouth suddenly. It wasn't crack or meth related. Mariah and Jack smoked crack all the time, but their lips never looked like that. "Alright, thanks for the business." The man started saying his cellphone number out loud. Jack wasn't planning on making him a contact at all, but still repeated the number to him, and put it in his phone purely out of appeasement.

"What the fuck you holdin' up the row for? Get fuckin' gone!"

"I'm trying! I'm not... sure..." Jack was slamming the accelerator down, real hard, full-speed and heathen while the car seemed smoky suddenly. The car wasn't moving, staling -JESUS CHRIST\- this is NOT the spot or time to have your car breakdown! And of course it was Mariah's car! She knew some shit like this would happen! Righteous! RIGHTEOUS, get us the fuck out of here!

"God FUCKIN' damnit!" Righteous was sweating badly while Mariah was beginning to cry. She looked down, was that, oh, oh Jesus, were those Jack's balls caught under the gas pedal!? Was this a weird mirage from the withdrawals!? "I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG!" A bunch of men on the block were slowly creeping towards the car, with debasing grins, Mariah was clutching the questionable stamp bags of dope, ready to scream, ready to puke. The men kept creeping closer, and closer, and closer and Mariah was crying so much and then she noticed the car had been jammed in park accidentally and she forced it out and into drive, blasting the Nissan into a speedy getaway, just in time, nearly hitting one of the jaywalkers ahead of them. All the tiptoeing men and dealers on the street stared the vehicle down as it coasted to towards midtown.

"We need to get you into a detox facility again, Mariah. You made SO much progress, and I find it so sad I can't tell all your old friends about your success." Jack said all this while they were driving away, and he was tearing open the bag, taking bumps, "I'm taking what I want by the way. Cause I'm an OG Righteous, Eh! Eh!" Oh sure, you're not the one withdrawing, go ahead, take whatever the fuck you want, Mr. OG, did you tell those dealers on Twinge what an OG you were, when your voice fell to that wimpy prepubescent timbre? "But yeah, I was so proud of you. I can't tell anybody the epic news of Mariah making it sixty days clean! Only fifty... god... only fifty... you were so close..."

"Why can't you just keep your mouth shut and not talk about my relapse at all? It's none of their business if I relapse or not. Why can't you worry about your own drug habits and money-spending problems? You always have to project your inner problems onto mine, and talk about all of my flaws... why can't you get out of my fucking life and leave me the fuck alone, give me back the fuckin' keys to my car and stop treating me like your own punching-bag!?" Mariah didn't actually say any of this, she was too scared; Jack Righteous had such intense bipolarity, any wrong word brought out a burning tomahawk, itching for violence, her best friend was a mentally unstable version of Turok. Mariah felt like Jill Valentine moments ago, at all the residential evil creeping towards her car. Could almost imagined herself gunning down all those dealing goons like zombies.

Jack dropped Mariah off at her parent's house. He felt it was a fair trade to let him use her car for a few days, given the effort he went through of having to hand her money to the nasty dealers. She didn't even try to debate. Last time she did ended real bad, for her, at least. And then the next day someone was sprayed with acid in the city.

Mariah didn't want to use the questionable heroin, its texture, smell, it seemed so bad, and tainted. She wanted to try to make it through one day \- just one screeching puking day and she had just puked then, eyeing with teary eyes at the gut-grated watermelon that landed in the grass. She felt so delirious in the sunshine, a stupid grin, a weird feeling in her bones, and muscles. She just looked around at the birds, at the blue sky, at the cutgrass, at everything. All these things she once worshipped, while reading a Ray Bradbury book in a lawn chair with Assam tea and goji berries. A healthy tan then, now her skin looks like she's holding a grudge against the sun. Oh, how the whities have fallen...

Mariah vomiter...

Mariah slender turkey, freezing in sun...

Mariah symbolist...

Mariah napping in doorway...

Mariah tying soft red ribbons...

Mariah transcending... Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Mariah, you have no clue what to do with your life, do you? No. You're throwing up in your parent's backyard, your car was taken ransom by a friend you get anxiety being around, and your own apartment keys are with him too. You're dope sick, and now you have dope but you're afraid to use it after so many have died from batches bought on those blocks. But Mariah... you're going to use it. You can't say no. You can't control this, this behavioral disease... you're not in control. Don't even act like you don't like it this way. Don't act like power is something you ever wanted. You never had faith in power. Don't deny the reason why you never fully got Jack Righteous out of your masochistic life.

Now as the hours went on, Mariah's life would turn from a sanctified motivation to a burning Sheol, a calming valley to Gehenna, her faceless guidance to an evening in Tophet. Somehow, for her personally, heroin withdrawal was less painful than dealing with her gender dysphoria. Such specific ailments met with a hungry-queasy-chilly-burning derealization. Mariah's biggest fear out of seeking treatment for depression or crippling anxiety, any mental health problem was enough for her to cover her stabbed palms, her stigmata, too risky given her transgender openness. She begged to be sober, to be happy, clean, to be carefree, educated, picking up family members from work. See any drawback would risk proving how unacceptable it is for some people to change to the genders that sincerely fit them better, regardless of the fact that you can't change who you are on the inside.

History once targeted gay men being seen as having some sexual pathology over their natural feelings, but with enough mainstream allotment, even gay men once accepted and cool, would come to attack transgender people. Gay men forgetting their auspicious forerunners, assaulted harassed raided forerunners, their poor forerunners; gay men were reprieved by assimilation. Women too, women everywhere feeling restored while protesting trans justices always chanting about mental illness, about delusions and distortion, and their safety in bathrooms when Mariah -from personal experience and from accounts of fellow trans friends- was the one encountered sexual pestering, assaulting, plaguing or general mistreatment in bathrooms. She had no criminal background. She was the one bullied in bathrooms, but the powerful lawmakers assumed she'd get revenge, or was simply lying. Mariah was happy with who she was, but the family refusals, employment difficulties, even discriminations from inpatient rehab facilities, shocking and upsetting given the high rate of addiction many trans people already faced, and in the end the rehabs failed transgender people. Threats, this was how Mariah was seen. A threat to the children and women, a threat to tax dollars, a burden, no trees to Heil, no races to win, just chasing to do... and then there was that trite, flaring comment, about the suicide rate... the high glaring rate of suicide before and after surgery... the card opponents loved to play, the royal flush hand in any conservative's dogmatic gender debate . . .

Mariah's hand dealt was always the same card: the chariot, that motherfuckin' chariot card, like a valentine from her guardian angel, or most likely a guardian demon - her soul and addiction disease struggling to coexist. Mariah was at a point in her life where she didn't know whom she was anymore, she couldn't recall the last time she felt healthy or happy, or that she could be alone with her own mind in a dark quiet room, and not vomit from ulcered fear, or vomit from agonizing withdrawals, or even vomit from simply overdosing on her star-crossed gratifier, and then always that fear, extreme fear, supreme fear of feeling like a mistake, of feeling rejected, unloved, or tough love fear, tough shit, well tough luck, Mariah, face your fear. And yet still your fear was less of a stranger in your life than smiling parents, or an uncomplicated day out in society, your fears, your fears.

Enormous fear, bleak, pounding, combative, orphaning, oppressing, drastic, maximum, ne plus ultra fanatical draconian fear, so exceptional; every night built by her fear, her last words, last breath, a fear at last call, a last judgment, her last rites, a fearful last kiss -LAST MARIAH STANDING\- her last ditch, her last hurrah, the last straw on her last leg and at-fucking-last, Mariah's last supper.

Mariah wanted heroin now more than ever; no crack, no blow, no crank, no weed, no tequila, Mariah needed heroin, the ultimate nurse. This was how withdrawals affected her, she'd take any sore muscles, extreme hunger, exhaustion, injured appetite, night sweats, shakiness, general weakness, clammy skin, severe sweating, agitation, delirium, restlessness, irritability, eyes crying, insufferable insomnia, vomiting, terrible farting, disorientation, maladroit panic attacks, striking seizures, stomach cramps so sadistic, teeth chattering, parochial Montezuma's revenge, feet tingling, finger trembling, a wedding of misery and desperation, a body at war with its mind the sickness of its choices and still all of this -all of this- all of this, all, all of this wasn't as painful as Mariah's gender dysphoria, as having teasing parents, and electroshock conversion therapy wasn't going to make things better. Those opponents telling her gender wasn't a choice, and yet that was exactly the point Mariah and her ilk tried to make. But any society that denied the importance of being in touch with your feelings, those societies tended to have some major problems. Coincidence? Touch luck, sane people.

Mariah gave in, and tried snorting the questionable powder, a test shot she was taught about at a needle exchange facility, something users don't always do but the inhalation was done to first check any new heroin bought before experiencing the instant absorption of intravenous consuming.

Mariah smiled strangely, as if peaking on a peyote trip, as if telling herself a lie during a ghastly mediation. Mariah's lips turned the color of robin eggs, that unmistakable blue, that -GOD HELP ME- blue, so airless, asphyxiated. Mariah shook, and fell down into the grass, in the sun heat, dying, in her chaos of barfed watermelon. Mariah was dead, she lay dead, her death, so anticlimactic, so simple, on such a beautiful day... perhaps the saddest part of her passing; the girl with a life built around art, the girl with documentary cameras rolling in her head, but no moonlight, no glitter, no bloody red wine or husband's hand to hold, just a blundering lonely death from drugs, the things she came to love most in life. No glamour for Mariah's cislunar demise.

In her fleeting thoughts, she imagined the Saint of Blasphemy coming, his triumphant carriage coming down the peaceful street, shining in the sun. St. Blasphemy coming to remove every stone nearby, to take down the sanctuaries segregating transgender and cisgender, and he -THE SAINT\- was then tying an illuminated square-shaped pendant around Mariah's neck. St. Blasphemy asked, in a mellifluous sunburst accent: "Madame, in what death, how is it that you will lastly pay for your life?"

Mariah was coughing out a few sudsy final words, while smelling the watermelon for the last time, "I... have... nothing... but... I... ca- ca- can... pay... you... with... my... heart..."

"So be it, Madame." And then St. Blasphemy carried Mariah's body to his chariot, placing her body delicately in the back seat. He rode away in the bright weekday sun.

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (Another dream)

It's August... Augusto... fuckin' August, already. Pax remembers when it was eight months ago... She remembers when it was eight years ago... she couldn't fathom that she has dreamt every night since then (forgetting the odd few all-nighters in college for assignments or anime marathons).

She can remember back to when her father last looked her in the eyes... those gunmetal eyes... and those eyes, from the stories overheard, were once canons, but as far as corrosion-resistant, Pax heard many discrepancies from mama and aunt Beth.

This dream felt like a different dimension to Pax, but then again every dream felt that way, especially as she got older. Dreams weren't as cliché to Pax as for many girls in the United States. These portals gave her thorough depictions of future events.

Schizophrenia . . . this was her long-term disarray, a hand of cards Pax was dealt, and she'd spend a lifetime learning how to play 'em or fold 'em or do both simultaneously. Like any word, it rode many train rides from stations in Latin, stations in Greek: skhizein, meaning 'to split,' and phrēn, meaning 'the mind.' But, who'd be so firm to claim the mind was ever united to begin with? Minds may not be born in marriage, or if they were, given the frequency of divorces, and the impact Mikhail's and Barbara's divorce had on Pax's upbringing, a mind separating its own lateral bride and groom might have felt oh so ordinary to Pax, in spite of mental health professionals and their buoyant verdicts.

The issue with time, for Pax, was one too frightening, mainly for those in her company. Being told to do something, and knowing for certain she already did it. Was this a frequent issue with sufferers of the disorder? Feeling out-of-time or on a different wavelength than others present? Or just understanding . . . the present? What did it all mean? Time, the measure of change, with time Pax enters the doctor's office normal and leaves a diagnosed schizophrenic. If time had stood still, in that office, before her doctor came in, she'd never hear the diagnosis. She'd sit in that chair, ironically, since many casualties already do such. She'd smoke a cigarette, chain-smoke, like a war vet, a sexy stout chimney Pax would be. With time, the cigarette goes from its thin shape of cylindrical tobacco to a stubby filter, covered in a navy blue lipstick, partially chewed, with a dying ember bidding farewell. Time bleeding on, so much blood, mixing with early days of milk, teen nights of honey, adult days of vodka . . .

A kitchen table, far back before days of milk, a man named Mikhail leaning across the kitchen table with a woman named Barbara, both having met in high school, sweethearts, madly kissing, convinced life is perfect when lived with love first, Mikhail is unfastening his belt, Barbara is lifting up her dress, ready to dress ship -TIME BLEEDS ON\- that kitchen table, now full of newspapers with repulsive headlines eclipsed by Mikhail's vodka bottles and pasta bowls he ate alone but by dogged and fulsome decisions -TIME BLEEDS ON\- the same kitchen table, with math homework assignments for Pax obscured by gin bottles, and pasta bowls ate alone but by heartbreak, by a lesbian love triangle ending with Pax being jilted -TIME BLEEDS ON\- the same kitchen table with no paper, and a male-to-female transgender drug addict snorting narcotics on a cheap mirror placed on top of the table after her friend Pax asked her watch her dog and feed it.

Thank you time for being the momentum between launch codes entered and the village bombed. Precious time, gallant time, thank you for entropy, and for atrophy, for not healing all wounds, pulling our strings of suspense -TIME BLEEDS ON\- for your work between the brooding plots and the slaughter of peaceful demonstrators . . . Dearest time, your role in allowing overthinking deranged males and their massacres at malls and universities, never labeled as terrorist attacks, but that's not on you Time, is it, or is it? Are you behind everything, Time, every crime, every cabaletta, every ceremony, every cum-stain? Oh, damn you Time, you're always up to something!

Ah, but, you know, there's a rumor going around, about you Time. YES, you. Yentas are hearing through the grapevine that you haven't been well oh treasured Time. In fact, some say you're already dead, already buried in your grave, and some muckrakers claim your corpse was exhumed and has been meddled with by schizophrenics with time-travelling abilities. Imagine if one had a degree in journalism, oh the story they could publish, perhaps in TIME magazine?

Pax was in a hallway. She saw one door to her right of ashen hue, a door handle so bloodless. Upon touch Pax questioned if it had lizard scales. Could... no... like Chanson? Pax entered. Inside this area, individuals were seen not for what they thought they looked like, but as others saw them. A fusion of others' rumors, mix-ups, fuck-ups, any taint on your reputation took manifestation while you were standing in this room. Such an amalgamation shined on the worst in your faults, and the walls were entirely covered in those reflective surfaces coated with glass we call mirrors, yet even the mirrors themselves were subject to the hate so many felt towards them . . . nobody liked mirrors, esp. self-conscious Americans. Mirrors had, maybe, the worst reputation in history.

Pax scrammed out of the room but the hallway was absent. She instead treaded outside into a courtyard where fog came out from the ground, fog escaping from the dirt, floating upwards towards the obscure night sky discolored with blue and purple bruises. In the distance were expressionless rotting picnic tables, each a different neutral dimness. Nobody was sitting at the many picnic tables.

Throughout the manic air were a series of flies, nasty vectors of mental illness here, not so much the physical symptom-producing type unrelated to injuries, no, flies spreading spiritual viruses.

Pax saw a glowing gate. She used her knee to push the gate open, allowing her to move forward through the vertical fog, appearing, somehow, in a doctor's waiting room.

This was the room of any anticipating to be pardoned, the Pardoning room. Pax came in, wearing a bolero jacket; her hair tied back, her skirt covered in stains from gum, peanut butter, cranberry juice, pasta dishes, cooking grease, and baby food. Pax touched the baby food, and got the impression that it was expired by many years.

The room was full of many men and women and some that seemed equal parts both; some sexy, others sexless, Pax even saw a snake. It was the snake, the tempter of Eve. It was still waiting, all these years, to be pardoned. "I know you."

The snake lifted up a bit, staring at Pax.

"I've known you for a while, long before your notoriety."

The snake kept staring at Pax.

"What are you being pardoned for?"

The snake looked down at Pax's stains on her long, untrendy skirt. The snake leaned in to nibble at the peanut butter and gum then slithered away to a different part of the waiting room.

"That was a stupid question," someone said as they approached Pax. It was, why, oh my word, of all the brawlers, it was Jack Righteous, in dirty white tank top. His shirt also had stains but types Pax couldn't and personally would never translate.

"My god, Jack, you're here... in the pardoning room?"

"That's right. It's hot as earth in here."

"Hah, funny. People usually say hot as hell, you know?"

Jack Righteous gave Pax a heavy-hearted stare, his head resting against the wall. The most serious mug he may have ever displayed. The room appeared to be transforming to a shade of burgundy, with flashes of golden-scarlet lights appearing on the walls and faces of people in the room at random times. There was also glitter in the air. "You know, my sweet leer seer, some bros only feel heavy-hearted because they're carry so many people around in their hearts."

"Is this hell!?" Pax was getting scared. "I used to never think hell was real, but Christ, what if it is!? And I did nothing to prevent it going there? Oh Fuck..."

"Hah, what about all those protection spells on the dance floor? Eh! Eh! Eh!"

"Stop! I'm being serious! I'm so afraid now!"

"I know. I'm being mean. And I'm sorry I said your question was stupid earlier. When you were talking to that snake. But... anyways... I have some bad news, Pax... Mariah is dead. Fuckin' dead. Another humble soul taken by the dope monster."

"Oh, oh, Jesus no," Pax began to cry. Her tears were a deep red wine color.

"I'm preparing her eulogy."

Pax wasn't as sad as she thought she'd be. She almost seemed slightly relieved. Not that her friend was dead, but that the waiting was finally over. She always worried about the day it would come. She knew Mariah could never get clean, err, when she was clean she barely managed to remain clean. She felt some people just weren't cut out for sobriety, no matter how hard they fought the craving, the disease. Pax then realized though that she wouldn't be able to ever talk with Mariah again. Pax couldn't even recall then what their last conversation was about. "Was it fentanyl?"

"Actually some are saying it was suicide. You know, trannies, they're predestinated. She was a decent writer! That was for sure. Weird poetry, but real fun stories, I must say. But I think fentanyl-laced heroin might have been the cause of death as well. Who knows! It's not like we're getting cellphone service in this room! Eh! Eh! Eh!" Jack gazed down at the paper titled: MARAYAH'S YULEEDGY.

The bullying, financial stress, relationship madness, general planet sadness, and status anxiety, and heartbreak: suicide, the greatest icon of how much pressure we undergo from simply being alive, and attempting to follow the game of time. Though the parts of the world with lower suicide rates saw higher levels of forgiveness, and more importance placed on fundamental assets. "God damn, god damn, god damn..." Pax said. "I loved her exactly as she was... I can't believe this," Pax stepped back a bit, seeing the door was open, while more were walking in. She turned her head back towards the center of the room and off Righteous went, to hustle with demons and flirt with the angels. Demons and angels all waiting to be pardoned - the idea reminded Pax of what Barbara used to say, "don't matter if you're a black man or a white man, in all of us a crook and cavalier." Pax saw Jack Righteous disappear among the crowds of war criminals, professors, lawyers, celebrities, slumlords, suddenly Jack was shouting at Pax, "you wouldn't believe what they consider a sin around here! Not at ALL what we used to call sins back home, or at the very least at MANIPULATION! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!!"

Pax left The-Waiting-Room-For-Being-Pardoned although her lobotomized square courtyard had been replaced with a staircase. Pax was suddenly in a damn tall, claustrophobically blueprinted flight of stairs. A shame, Pax was just getting used to her backwards courtyard. How could she get used to this flight of stairs? She'd barely fly well with her insect wings.

On one of the steps Pax saw a Gila monster, but she couldn't tell if it was her pet lizard or not. The color of its body resembled a rich graphic harlequin theme, yet Pax still felt it might be her Chanson. A cigarette rolled onto one of the steps out of nowhere, and with squinting eyes Pax noticed the cigarette read New Mexico on it. The venomous reptile wobbled over to the ciggy, picked it up with its mouth and began to inhale the smoke. Pax sort of grinned at it but suddenly revolved to repulsion; the lizard's whole body, minus the head, tail, four legs, was turning into ash, crumbling by the particle! The picturesque scales, once jazzy harlequin scales, now a cindery heap of grief. The ashes seemed to blow, they permeated all the steps beneath, a whole staircase turned to slag. The only color left glowing was the cigarette coal, still lit a pumpkin tint. Pax wanted to flee the area, still suspicious over where her courtyard went, and her picnic tables.

As she moved down on the staircase steps, Pax heard the sound of eggs breaking, maybe the eggs of the Gila monster? Chanson? Oh, Jesus, Pax, were those your scaly grandchildren you were killing? Over and over? Have you no shame?

While she kept moving down the steps of the creepy staircase, Pax heard Mariah's voice echoing through the area, something about writers and how they are screaming to communicate, writers desperate to communicate with the world, with their families, with their lovers, with anybody, everybody, nobody, bodies . . . now she could hear her own voice, Pax felt like, in the dream, she was being denied so much. Entrance into rooms, entrance into courtyards, time spent with her friends, with her father. She kept running down the staircase, which seemed to be taking on different appearances every ten or twenty steps. Pax felt her own voice, self-loathing: Pax, you're so queer! Why do you have to be so queer! You're such a freak! All those queer parties you go to! You're such a weirdo, Pax! You'll never have a good job, or live in a safe neighborhood! They'll say, GEEZ LOUISE! That freak! Hide the knives! Hide the dish soap! Hide any belts or shoelaces or fantasy posters! That weirdo! That queer rotten lousy dopey loopy lamebrained floozy bitchy creepy spooky UGLY MOTHERFUCKING SCHIZO!

So many negative voices, inner voices, all voices, Pax could hardly breath, she couldn't even begin to tell what voice came from where, her dream was tormenting her, teasing herself, making her feel so worthless, someone so severely queer, someone so strange, it was . . . . . . . . . . . . . u n p a r d o n a b l e ?

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . Pax woke up then. She wiped the sweat off the back of her neck on her blanket. She nippily jerked her sweaty black cami off. She leaned over to grab her cellphone and to send a text message to Mariah. Pax typed out how she wanted to get together this weekend and that she loved Mariah so much and that she wanted to read any recent poetry Mariah had been working on. Pax took a deep breath, jokingly said to herself: 'freak power, freak power,' and got comfortable in her bed again, hoping for a reply, waiting for a reply from Mariah. Pax noticed the wait. Mariah was always good about instant replies... what was going on?

Waiting like demons and angels in the Pardoning room . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . "Up Next? The snake that tempted Eve! Please come up to the sixth counter! Have your ticket ready, please!"

PAX / YOUNG ADULT YEARS (EPILOGUE)

"You run away? You want to hide?

I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved."

-FRANZ KAFKA

A line from Jean-Paul Sartre, "Everything has been figured out, except how to live." This quote pedaled through Pax's head as she was approaching a hair salon. She was meeting a new friend there, a girl that works with her mother Barbara at a Burberry boutique. Barbara said, "look for the tall woman, eyes as green as a like a kale smoothie. Long brunette hair like the color of coffee. Oh, and Pax! Can't you cut back on coffee? You oughta be drinking kale smoothies, I mean-" blah blah

Pax was always nervous entering a room business or restaurant or bar on her own, and she'd be extra nervous if she forgot to Google the business beforehand. Venturing into buildings without a satellite image of the street it's on and the business hours reassured was too adventurous for Pax. But luckily most in the waiting room section were reading magazines, Allure, Vogue, one National Geographic magazine laid on the coffee table in the center of the modish waiting room. The theme of the issue was about a 'gender revolution,' though some people had taken it upon themselves to write some nasty trolling comments, in regards to the young brave girl on the cover. Pax felt depressed at the sight and attempted to censor the senseless intolerance. The waiting room felt familiar to Pax, then again every waiting room felt the same. This one had a steamy pink-red light effect. A set of curtains covered the door. Pax felt so happy to see women coming in all cheerful but any already sitting seemed miserable and unresponsive, unsociable, even at the odd stranger's smile, a way of saying -HEY, HOPE YOU'RE WELL, EVEN IF I DON'T KNOW YOU\- this seemed to be the lonely and ill direction most Americans were headed, their automatic wary standpoint; as if more and more Americans had befell too farouche once outdoors, in public. Too many people with social anxiety, always on their phone but never replying to anybody; western civilization was extremely sick, and growing exceedingly tasteless, disturbing, neurotic, even the very rich failed to feel seductive or at enjoying their charmed life.

'WESTERN CIVILIZATION WAS EXTREMELY SICK' wrote beneath the trolling comments, but then panicked at the misinterpretation. She worried others might think she was agreeing with the nasty vandalism. Pax gave up. She tried, failed, gave up.

Was this from so many heartbreaks? Or from so many broken families? Pax wouldn't go so far to as that she has an 'excuse' over her schizophrenic illness, but if there were ever a reason she'd chain-smoke, in the face of overwhelming evidence showing nicotine playing a role in schizophrenia's development (Pax really needed a smoke to self-medicate, to comfort the torment of coping with bad voices, tolerating her hallucinations, having new fears and traumas so regularly). Smoking under more recent evidence has been linked to severe psychosis episodes. But why so many everyday folk becoming so introverted? Even in this room, Pax saw no real openness, no brave neighborly faces, all where folding their arms in more and more, scrolling down their phone screens more and more, the introversion turning deeper, tighter, yet no spiritual contemplation took place, it was out of fear, anxiety, out of legless superstition, so many in this century injured by love, injured by ignorance, or injured by poverty, or simply injured by hatred. All these thoughts swimming in Pax's brain, while she sat in an all-too recognizable waiting room at a salon. It was almost a feeling as if she knew she'd be back in this room, or maybe she'd been in it a hundred times before. Pax was so lost.

After waiting for an antsy chunk of time, Pax then saw the bathroom door next to the check-in desk open up. And there she was - so happily directionless, sanguine and content. Just from her jolly smile, the way her shoulders relaxed so nonthreatening, Pax felt that this was a woman who wanted to be friends with everybody. "Hey! Pax? It's me, Mariah! Nice to meet you!" What a smile, Pax beheld, what a smile Mariah had. Mariah naturally seemed to hug everybody and Pax was no exception. They sat next to each other; then to be informed they were next at having their hair appointments.

Mariah was there for a teensy weeny cut and a blowout, though not begging for a blowout, they always offered and Mariah was a woman who was too polite to ever dampen someone's day in any way possible. "Oh, sure! Thank you! I'd love a blowout!"

Pax was full pastel tonight, right down to her skull. She wanted butterflies fluttering out of her mane, sooty lilac, cotton-candy, brassy rosy goldness; colors to make the Easter bunny jealous.

"I normally don't wear tops like this, but I've been so into researching tigers and leopards and I've been so scared, thinking about the future, this idea that we may not have tigers around! Or cheetahs around! It's heartbreaking!"

"Technically," the hairdresser butted-in, "the majority of life on earth undergoes some extinction at one point or another, it's very normal for any species to face the music," she was paraphrasing something from a George Carlin comedy sketch.

"I think it's different when it's man-made, don't you think? Environmental extinction is different than say, hunting and tormenting and endangering, yeah?"

"Yeah, I agree," Pax added softly, slightly scared to contribute to the talk.

"Well, no, I don't," the hairdresser chuckled some forced laugh, "but it's ok. I mean, if a lion or a rifleman hunts a gazelle, aren't the results the same? Isn't it all natural, in the end, dude?"

"I don't think rifles, or bullets qualify as natural in the animal kingdom. And I'm not a dude. My name is Mariah. I'm a female."

"Sorry..." eyes rolled. Pax felt nervous at the growing tension.

"Also, I love your nails! Like shellac pygmy arrows!" Mariah beamed genuine.

"Thanks, honey!" Pax relaxed then at shift in conversation.

The appointments were finished. Mariah felt vibrant, unprocessed, whereas Pax looked romantically colorful, her brightness, stenciling, highlights, Pax's appearance sweeter than a mousse pudding. Mariah paid for both hair sessions, leaving a slightly higher tip to Pax's stylist, especially after seeing all her dry shampoos, hair masks and oils and waxes were cruelty-free. So many images, and Pax wanted to take a selfie, and Mariah felt it best to do it before they got to the bar. Her lack of social media could still haunt her vicariously through selfie-snapping friends. Here they were, new looks, new moods, a new moon in the sky; the Self is constantly changing.

"I can't wait to have a husband one day," Mariah said to Pax as they walked down the avenue, from the salon towards the bar. "No more sleeping around, late drinking binges, just a nice house, on a safe street, OFF-STREET parking. Oh, dear, to me that's like Malibu status luxury, not having to parallel park!"

"Right! God, I don't even have a license yet. I'm just not ready, but I know what you mean, I can't even handle watching people parallel park. But I feel the same way, a simple life, you know?"

"Yeah, a quiet life, simple pleasures. That's what I truly want in life, for my future, anyways. I could revisit all those books I bought in college. Make a cool display for my manga anthologies. We could live together! Both of us with both of our husbands! Relaxing, movie marathons."

"It'll be great, babe," Pax smiled at Mariah, feeling blind in the city, these two girls, carefree, knowing tomorrow they could sleep-in, get coffee, listen to their favorite music. When life hit its high notes, things were all right. Like those feelings we all had as kids, watching cartoons, no cares in the world. Anxiety? We could barely write the word, let alone live it. Mariah and Pax, roughly the same age, Pax being Mariah's senior by two pulsating years. Both missed their happy-go-lucky youths. Even with all the divorces, parents fighting, arguing, slamming doors, the occasional slaps in the face; things still seemed better every other summer. If either Pax or Mariah heard the opening theme to the RUGRATS these days, it'd likely bring them to tears.

"I'm sensing that we have a lot in common," Mariah smiled, making a mental note to be extra good about this relationship. Mariah didn't want to lose another friend over any reason. Mariah needed Pax. They reached the entrance to MANIPULATION. Both enjoyed a cigarette outside before entering. Mariah celebrated every chance to show her license to somebody. Knowing her name was legally changed, seeing that update, felt like Christmas morning to her, everytime - Mariah never phoned-in her gratitude.

"Your name, it's Russian, right?"

"Yes!"

"Do you speak any?"

"Eh, some. I heard it growing up, but I heard a lot of things growing up, and I never was sure what voice was coming where. Everything felt alien."

"Maybe you can help follow the plot of this bootleg copy of STALKER I got. There's no subtitles but we can eat guacamole while watching it, and you can translate the Russian!"

Mariah was in the bathroom at MANIPULATION. She rolled up the left sleeve of her black-tan zebra printed pullover. She clenched her left mitts, repeatedly, over and over, so very mantric, her fisting; she quickly performed the ASL gesture for sunshine, cheering herself up.

This was a very stressful part of her everyday life. She sometimes cried at this point, having reached the step of swabbing her arm multiple times, looking for a decent vein to use, always anxious about screwing things up. Mariah held her needle up to her eye, shaking and flicking out air bubbles. A knock at the bathroom door, Mariah began to hurry up. The passionate version of her intravenous drug injection ritual would have to wait until later; this would have to turn into an express bang, a meteoric mainline.

Mariah exited the bathroom. A few regulars at MANIPULATION saw her, rolling their eyes in junkie flaking, though Mariah's genuine politeness was enough to keep them checking in on her. All the regulars at MANIPULATION checked in on Mariah. She was cared for and worried about by many, of all ages, of all backgrounds; Mariah felt the negative news, puff pieces, agitprop, disinformation, and all those social media abhorring harassers, everything seemed more bearable, less menacing, less upsetting, when Mariah realized how many people -IN THE FLESH, IN REAL LIFE- cared for her, no matter what she was going through. These friends? These friends brought her rising waters of depression back to a swimmable freedom. All turbulent streamlines reset to a smoothable flow, a laminar of leisure... and here she had a new friend, Pax, somebody she could spend many nights with dancing.

"You know, I've been practicing magic for fifteen years."

"Damn," Mariah had also been involved in something for almost fifteen years, magickal it once felt, "is there a certain spell you find most powerful or personable?"

"I like to do protection spells for when I'm on any dance floor, and my favorite DJs are spinning. I love DJ Roma Flute, and DJ Flop-Flips. So much talent in our city."

"I agree, this is a special place we're in..." Mariah's voice faded out of Pax's ear slightly. Where Pax was sitting at the bar counter she could see a man at the far end of the room. It was a fairly busy crowd. Lots of people enjoying happy hour drinks, pulling out cigarettes and leaving for the back courtyard to smoke them. For every few leaving the counter, a few more came and replaced them. Pax was transfixed, stabbed by the man's silhouette, hypnotized by his hips, engrossed by his gross deficiency of cleanliness, spellbound by the natural scene, of which no spell had been summoned, or even considered. This was a bar Pax could go to anytime -ALL THE TIME\- Pax was found here. Mariah had been coming here for years but the two weren't formally introduced until Barbara stated at work how her daughter frequents MANIPULATION . . .

. . . Jokingly (perchance) Barbara had said, 'oh, my daughter haunts that place. I'm surprised you've never seen her there, Mariah. I've dropped her off a million times.'

'Well, I know just about the whole scene there. I'm shocked I never met her either. I bet I'll love her. I love you and Beth.'

'Well, she's very different. Actually, she's a lot like her father.'

'Oh, yeah? Does he live in this city?'

'Woah, doggy, don't get me started on that alky, dipso loser!'

'Ooh, why'd you bring him up then?'

. . . Pax was staring down the man. There happened to be a TV set above his head, and one of the MANIPULATION staff was on a mini stepladder covered in stickers of local hardcore bands, fiddling behind the tube, yanking, twisting, bending cables of each color, transmission, who knew? But the whole time the TV was shifting back and forth between semi-clear images, and hissing crackling white noise static. Pax felt her vision zooming in, a post-dimensional gaze impaling past the hipsters taking shots.

At the entrance for MANIPULATION, Jack Righteous was fighting with the bouncers and Joe Crate was buying a round of shots for his friends, applauding his new torture attic he finally assembled, and some band was coming in from the back entrance, preparing for their gig at MANIPULATION. Friends of DJ Mick Munch were all holding up a shot. One brought a shot over to Mariah.

Pax the ophthalmic impaler hadn't even noticed Mariah was nodding off herself, though a specific object of focus she had not. She was just too high to function, she was always too high to function. The many regulars at MANIPULATION would come up and rub her back, mournfully checking in on her, knowing she was fucked-up, but only to make sure she wasn't gone past the point of no return. Friends of heroin addicts had to worry like this all the time about their beloved troubled friends. It was ok to love an addict, they knew, they were used to the pain of seeing a friend suffer, but they weren't numb to it, not numb like Mariah always had to be.

Pax kept staring at the man, his cream-colored skin, smoky hair, with cigarette tucked behind his right ear, the sheared stubble budding of what once was a Vandyke beard, but what of the eyes, Pax? Can you see his eyes? Not a slate, not a charcoal, not a silver, not a platinum, no, but what gray was it? What of his eyes, Pax? What color!? A specific gray... were they... Christ, it was too hard to tell... The TVs white noise was growing in or maybe it was her internal white noise? He wore simple clothes with an odor that could be smelled from her spot, similar to the type of odor Mariah had, but of a different crux... what of the eyes? His head turned a short bit to the right, Pax went bug-eyed like her Aunt Beth always did, refusing to blink, refusing to acknowledge anything else in the world. What color were his eyes!? Cloudy? Gloomy? Hoary? Shiny? Beady!? Glossy!? Oh, good lord, the raw crescendo of the static cacophony peaked. The TV went back into focus. The goring brutality became clear, in high resolution. It was war footage. The man looked up at the TV and then looked down at his glass of liquor, shaking his head, full of remorse and fear. He turned his head towards Pax but his eyes were shut, she couldn't determine what gray they were for he shut his eyes because he couldn't stomach to see the inhumanity of war. The entire crowd in the bar then -communally- saw the televised bloodshed, and all looked away in pain, and shut their eyes; all shut their eyes at the inhumanity of war.

The End

July 2017
