sleep deprived and paranoid

"One must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited aesthetic claptrap."
-john cage

a smoke break in the middle of a slow shift. uncomfortably seated on a curb not too far from the entrance of the restaurant.

i could see the narrow set of stairs that led up to the shaded patio dining area. my view was slightly obstructed by an over sized SUV parked crookedly beside the landing. so, really, i could only spot the last step, a slight drop afterwards and you were on asphalt, and also the varying tops of the disembodied heads of our satisfied customers as they left the restaurant with their invisible, possibly nonexistent, bellies full of cheesy goodness and tangy marinara.

it's kind of hard to say whether or not these mysterious heads leave the restaurant with the bodies they originally came in with. perhaps they had coldly left them in the trunk of their cars, squirming and scratching at the interior with frantic passion. without the head to reason and puzzle their situation, the body is left to its own carnal devices. the heads coldly float along with as much regard for their headless partner as a hit man for his cemented sneakered victim plummeting to the bottom of the boat basin.

or...

maybe they suddenly sprout them again, some strange evolved human with the regenerating powers of a skink, only more widespread throughout the body. have aliens conquered this city? subjugated it's people? mind fucking us into ignorant submission? i'll never know, for sure, they seem to grow them back when i think about it too hard or when i take any notice of it. what if, and maybe this sounds crazy, they had us so utterly pinned, we would unknowingly place replacement bodies in reserved seats? somewhere in the back of every restaurant in this town lies a miniature station where their biomechanical traveling suits are manufactured by brainwashed humans. i couldn't possibly be involved in the production, i'm way too technologically back-ass-wards. or maybe i am included. just another working component in this giant war machine. i just have to keep playing it their way, i guess, so long as i leave with my pathetic pay check and my equally pathetic life.

such bizarre thoughts on such a muggy day. the humidity seems to addle the ol' noggin.

i could also spot them (these crazy humanoids) leaving when the front door swung open. these faces seemed able to travel on the slight rush of air escaping from those spring loaded doorways. so light, they appeared to be, that even a simple gust of air conditioned air could send them whirling into their cushioned seats.

the plug was pulled and two wrinkled heads slowly hovered out, then gradually turned towards my little vantage point, which (and i didn't know this yet) just happened to be right next to their car. with god given, sloth-like grace common in most older couples, four sets of mossy loafers descended the stoop. time abruptly changed. flowed differently. as if a stone had been thrown in the middle of the shallows, redirecting the original flow of the creek.

dry paint began to dry more, sun began to dropped, grass grew noisily, and the yellow moss on their feet seemed to grow brighter. hours became minutes and seconds became minutes, months were years and days were years. these two characters seemed to have induced a universal seizure of some sort.

death has obviously been shadowing these two for a long time. he crept into neighbors attics, potato sack full of random surveillance equipment. a stake out with emilio esteves. bugs have been planted in every single phone in the house, mini cameras installed in their medicine cabinets, rotating cameras above showers and beds, not one sluggish footstep went without notice. the house hummed and beeped with electrical life, and the tenants were none the wiser. some how their time was never up. death grits his teeth and shakes his fists above his head, his frustration could not be more apparent. the couple was too slow to die, time was always way ahead of them, across the finish line and over the sea, hasn't bothered to look back. maybe it's about time death reset his wristwatch. pressed an ear to check the its pulse. then again, maybe this odd pair found a way around death, avoided the alleys and corners where he lurked. strange creatures with even stranger abilities.

they eventually hit the final step. an anvil thrown into an empty library.

there was something that took on the appearance of the female. wrinkled arms thinning with muscle atrophy, curled up over two hideous excuses for breasts, that dangled listlessly over a belly the size of a basketball. the skin was fake, it must have been. there was no way that could've been living tissue. this was one defective body she had been stuck with. should i tell her? no. too funny, too awkward. somehow those tyrannosaurus arms of hers could support enough gold jewelry to sink a spanish galleon. she could obviously afford a decent body. her neck. my god, it was a deflated cow's udder and, like most people her age, was probably covered in a field of fine white hairs. her body, in it's decaying state of being, must have mixed up the vials of testosterone and estrogen. an aging cell, keeper of hormones, with failing eyesight reads the label wrong. a practical joke, perhaps?

so ghostly pale and thin, silky even. i bet they'd be worth thousands of dollars on the black market.

yes. she appeared first, stooping and shuffling along as if she'd just been released from her little cubby hole in the bell tower. the man, her husband i assumed, though he showed absolutely no interest in her, also hunched, but much less so than his mutant wife. their postures resembling that of a drunkard beaten within an inch of his drunken life. the man wore his best, dusty old suit, that looked to have been purchased somewhere in the nineteen seventies. a thrift store get up, of some sort. something i would buy and wear with my darth vader helmet. the lady wore a shaggy moo moo fashioned out of kitchen window curtains.

*at this time i picture this old man naked slithering along into an old cardboard box labeled "donation bin." two seconds later, he pops out fully dressed, mothballs and cigar holes. a bottle of dime store cologne tucked away neatly in a shirt pocket.*

the couple kept shuffled along, wordlessly, stiffly and without any other bodily movement whatsoever, until they had reached the bench where i sat silently watching them. the old man's head then slowly, ever so slowly, turned towards me bringing, into the sunlight, a head as bald as a bastard. so clean and white was this fleshy spot that i was temporarily blinded by the reflection of the setting sun. his cold blue eyes regarded me thoughtlessly, two sky blue windows, beyond which a set of rusty cogs, stiff sprockets, and toothless gears, sputtered and groaned, shaking away a coat of rust and frozen oil. a dead hamster, skin drawn tightly over it's miniature skeleton, rocks back and forth on a squeaky running wheel turned cradling casket. all behind a brittle egg shell and some amazing liver spotted skin draperies, that swung about comically before those empty blue windows. He stared at me for a while, a very stern stare. a strange self-conscious mind examining me through the front windows built into a ridiculous facade. his gelatinous, pale skin seemed to be attached to his face with an ancient and very cheap epoxy, it quivered with senile confusion.

the more i stared, the more his physical form changed. his skin seemed to take on a life of its own. a symbiotic relationship of some sort, between man and costume, costume and man, the lesser species on the outside, blanketing the tender innards and conveying the thoughts, emotions and feelings of the greater inside organs through facial expressions and foolish hand gestures. it's very survival depends on its ability to decode and translate his decrepit master's electric signals into an acceptable form of human behavior. i pity that skin, i wonder if it knows it's life giver's own life is nearing it's end. will it crawl off, defeated, and slug along the asphalt only to find another skinless body to lazily drape over and hang onto like a wet sheet on a clothesline?

he kept looking, some inner struggle seemed to tear him two different ways. or just one, but what it was, i'll never know. maybe he wanted to express his thoughts on the meal, the service or atmosphere of the restaurant or maybe he just liked my shirt. maybe he thought i looked goofy, just another foolish young brat that thinks he knows everything there is to know, but only understanding one biased half. good or bad, i felt i had to break this strange ice developing and show my good intentions. it would take them months to reach their car door, quite possibly years. my break was nowhere near done, so i figured i might as well make what few minutes we would share together more comfortable. i smiled, politely, and waved. i come in peace. a mere flowered shirt tourist lost in this brief overlapping of opposite circles. generation blank and generation old, come together and...

did he take it positively? wait, maybe i angered the sorry beast. no, i don't think his memory banks, so holed and dilapidated, could recollect the meaning of a simple smile and a friendly wave. maybe. harmless memory loss or blatant rudeness?

not a word was said about the food, service or speed. no complaints and no compliments. no smile or perfunctory nod, slight hand movement or a brief elevating of the eyebrows. just one long, endless stare. i broke eye contact and became lost in thought, a feeling a little embarrassed.

the female creature, who took absolutely no notice of me, pawed weakly at the passenger side door. her long, bright red nails scratching in patient impatience at the flawless wax coat on the car. her gaudy jewelry rattled and banged. so loud was it that i'm almost certain the ears of every homeless man, women and child in bangladesh, perked up in hungry anticipation. the man fumbled dumbly with a complicated set of three keys until he finally fit the point into the hole.

* i'm sure the man would experience some strange sense of doddering deja vu later in the night. i pictured him, glass of tiger's blood and panda milk in one hand, bottle of viagra in the other. dressed in his sexily conservative pair of pin striped long johns. the crone prepares for the romantic night ahead, topping off their sexy italian meal. the man's hard on, try as it might, is shamelessly losing the battle against the thin fabric of his pajamas. a small white flag is all it's able to raise.

his wife, in a silk nightie, unable to sleep lying down flat (lest the fluids in her hump consume her), is propped upright by a reading pillow. she's as close to being "good to go" as she's gonna get and her husband knows it. she crooks a finger in his direction, beckoning him towards her, then slowly spreads her veiny legs apart. the sound, i imagine, is one of an ancient stone door to an egyptian treasure tomb slowly sliding open for the first time in over two centuries. a grainy rumble that echoes impressively throughout the dusty chamber. a geyser of dust spews forth signifying that the vagina is open and ready, gaping like a hungry maw. the man desperately tries to rouse his defeated pecker, her withered vagina is about as appealing to him as the mouth of a lamprey eel. actually, just thinking of how much better those rows and rows of sharp, bloodsucking teeth would feel when compared to this barren, skin searing wasteland of a cunt, really got his motor running. he'd have to remember to get one of those next time. dig around in some swamp, bleeding cod fish as bait.

what follows can only be described as the lamest mummy fuck ever. rhythmic weight shifting, stifled yawns and desiccated wheezing orchestrates this repulsive dance of sorts. their pores audibly emit an eerie hissing sound, much like a tea kettle on a lit stove. powdered sweat mixed with what little moisture their rubbing bodies can spare creates a very pasty and very chalky sex cocktail. the soft sound of snake skin on a wet pile of yard trash can be heard above the monstrous crescendo of hacking and spitting, bone creaking and occasional snapping.

time has lost all meaning, somehow. once again, these abominations send the universal order spiraling into oblivion. any poor soul observing might get lost in their hypnotic pumping, caught somewhere between gagging and shitting themselves.

suddenly, the air is still and silent, no orgasmic moans have been heard in this room for the past thirty years, and, if the room actually expected to ever hear it again, it would be terribly disappointed. the old man collapses in a heap beside a snoring wife who may or may not have been conscious when he had finished. they will not move for seven days. *

i watched them leave, a smug smile creeping its way across my sorry old mug. they had unknowingly been casted in a perverted play of mine that. i'm sure in reality, they would've turned those bloated old noses up to it or maybe just keeled over from a heart attack. their sorry faces and pathetic routines, were all just props, sets and masks, easily pasted and thrown together in this mr. potato head imagination of mine. no copyright laws or U.S. patent documents or wavers that needed signatures of approval. just good ol' imagination and a guarded tongue. revenge is sweet, especially when the victim is none the wiser.

(i wonder if they really would've turned down my little script.)

they staggered into a box shaped scion with a heavenly white coat of unscathed paint, and slowly drove away.

i scratched the rim of my nose and was pleasantly greeted by a giant clod of green and yellow. this nose goblin had been dangling out in the open, probably had seen the whole thing too. wonder what he thinks of me now. i wiped it onto the bottom of my shoe.

i flicked my smoldering butt, got up and returned to the endless grind of alien slave labor. all the heads remained still. i was now onto their sick, twisted plot. smart, wise and ready.