the scene is thus:
a blue modern shanty house, its mediocre wooden structure tilting slightly to the right, stands on concrete stilts its windows placably black and empty. the facade wears a comforting but sad expression for its occupants sleep soundly inside and are no longer actively enjoying the roomy interior. off to one side of this cheeringly melancholy house sits an open carport, the house's smaller cousin. when looking at the carport one might mistake it for a guest room currently under construction with its flimsy concrete skeleton baring, for all to see a striped couch wet from the humidity of the night and spotted with mold, and an old floor lamp banished to the empty garage that hopes, one day, to serve a brilliant purpose and dreading the day it ends up discarded like all the other excess furniture. the night air remains still as stone, breeze so slight as not to even be called movement, crickets whispering to one another like lovers in a library whose compulsion to serenade one another greatly overpowers the strict rules of conduct associated with those rigid public institution. nature remains respectfully quiet as if sensing the overall sadness of the early morn. the wind may not be blowing but the chill in the motionless air is enough to cause discomfort.
the scene appears empty at first. sure there's an opossum snooping around the garage interior with the hopes of discovering forgotten edible treasures, its cunning form winding behind that woebegone floor lamp. an overly alert owl, only its silhouette and bright golden eyes are visible to the inquisitive marsupial below, watches with exaggerated curiosity. its attention remains fixed until a blubbering sob breaks the natural harmony of the night. disgusting wet sniffles and moans soon follow and the creatures seem to retreat repugnantly into the night.
"oh, woe is me," the oblivious, unseen being cries to the night, "woe is me for my heart has been abroken." his attempt at poetic expression falls very short, clearly this thing feels very sorry for himself, absolutely convinced he has played victim in some negative circumstances of late.
we pan up to the roof of the carport to find a most pathetic, sobbing individual, pants sagging well below his boney waist and wrinkled parka bunched up awkwardly under his fetal form. his face is a mess; bright red eyes brimming with tears eager for a good jog down the cheeks and a face that resembles an edible root, possibly a rutabaga. his lips, chapped from the cold, peel back over yellow teeth as if a knife had sliced open the spinal area of a turkey to reveal the normally unexposed skeletal structure to the world. if one were to be viewing this sad, sad scene from above one might be under the impression that this fully clothed adult male had spent his whole life in the womb and had, till now, been forcefully ejected, what with his bean shaped posture and childlike whimpering.
his hands, shaking feebly, comb the exterior of his shorts looking for the entry slit into his shallow pocket, searching as if self aware for that special box. his fingers, almost jaundice in appearance, withdraw with a familiar, albeit bent and wrinkled, pillar of filtered tobacco. his trembling fingers struggled to properly place the cigarette within the grasp of his slimy, reptilian lips.
he sparks the lighter and a bright flame leaps into existence ready to destroy, to chemically transform, and to heat the first thing it comes into contact with. the initial drag quiets his sobs, the tears stop flowing and the jerky spasm often associated with mental stress slowly cease to be, the second quiets his moaning. his nostrils still happily work their mucus magic unaware that their sodden faced operator has stopped crying, the nerve signal mysteriously lost somewhere between the optical nerve endings and the albuquerque post office.
while rubbing the snot onto the sleeve of his coat the man, whose name is paul, sits himself up into a more respectable, though still slouched, position and gazes through blurry, rain streaked braindows, at his immediate surroundings. a long stretch of translucent mucus runs the length of his arm, he examines it curiously. a racing slug perhaps? or a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of nose honey. he feels a pang of embarrassment, already was he the laughing stock of his entire social circle, the clueless third wheel who doesn't get the joke everyone's telling, but now he was a whimpering weakling unable to take such an predictable emotional blow.
his friends, the roommates, sleep soundly inside, unaware of the inner torment and self loathing bout of depression their compadre is going through. he half hoped his moaning would be noticed by them, half afraid of the regret he would feel in the morning by laying his emotions bare. as much sadness as he felt at this point in time he found himself almost enjoying it. it seemed to paul comparable to an old acquaintance, a vagabond, who travels in and out of your life. he takes up room on the couch, sure, but offers undivided attention when the need is most. he assures you that you're right and whatever issue has you all balled up is an act of evil committed by people who are in the wrong. not always looked forward to, but welcomed all the same. misery, that disreputable hobo whose haggard appearance destroys even the most ravenous of appetite, just so happens to be in the neighborhood this time of the year. passing through, he glances up at the brooding paul atop the roof and decides to stop in and see what sort of turmoil a frequent friend is going through. his presence brings tears, as satisfying as rupturing a swollen blister, the release is so sweet and soothing that the prick of the heated needle is soon forgotten.
Paul senses an aura of grave need, surrounding his long time friend and paul looks up questioningly, hoping to get some answers or a bit of advice from this silent fellow. he reaches over gently and, with a dirt smudged smile, wipes the collecting tears from paul's bulbous, veiny eye lids.
'where will I go?' he inwardly addresses his hobo friend, ' and what will we do when I get there? i can't seem to sleep, i can't seem to eat. my stomach aches to no end and my brain is all heated up!"
wordlessly misery takes him by the reign and begins to lead. paul's mind becomes blank, almost zen like, each step away from the house becomes much lighter. both meander clumsily through the secret path that lay behind the wooden blue house and up to the main, one way street. paul blindly puts his trust in misery sensing that his traveling friend has an appointment with someone or something, and that this appointment may give direction to the rest of the evening and early morning. there is a sense of complacent urgency and passive determination in the way misery guides, another being must be waiting near this unusually quiet road, perhaps further down.
on arrival paul finds that he no longer senses his friends presence, as i have said before, paul's mind is devoid of thought and feeling at this point in time. the only 'feeling' is an urge, a compulsion to explore the convenient store down the road, a lingering sense of meaning to this directionless walk.
it's a short distance from house to store, the walk takes no longer than three minutes or so. the convenient store is quiet and dark like the rest of the small town at this hour. paul frequents the establishment in the daytime to buy a cheap pack of smokes or even the occasional beer, in fact a week earlier, paul had come to purchase many different cheeses for fajita night. cheesy fajitas often cheered paul up. but not now, no. the very thought of food seemed make his throat tighten up. paul was here for something more than than just tobacco, alcohol or cheese. paul was here to kill an overwhelming nagging sensation, to meet a mysterious friend of a friend. paul was here to find meaning, a goal to this sleepless, most distressing night.
the store is, unsurprisingly, empty and locked, the hours of operation (according to the store window) don't go beyond ten o'clock in the PM. it's three in the morning at this point. the parking lot and gas pumps, out of order signs swaying gently to a breeze unfelt, were ghostly empty. shady, bleary eyed and foolish looking, paul peers curiously into the window at the dimly lit isles sparsely packed with foreign goods, junk food snacks and at the chipped paint on the walls. perhaps his appointment lies in wait, ready to unlock the doors and greet him warmly.
a slight movement from the periphery of his vision, the dimension of the damned, slowly draws his attention to his left. had the fiend come to do battle? there, maliciously staring from behind a corner, peaked a hideous face and two gnarled hands gripping the building's edge with white knuckled anticipation. grubby, wrinkled and foreboding was its mien. the texture of his skin reminds paul of the pictures he had seen in his health book back in high school of dissected smokers lungs, black and yellow like the craggy surface of some alien planet. his beady eyes regard paul with interest, yellow irises behind which some evil plan is being concocted, his pulse visible through bulging veins in his forehead. he crooks a finger at the now frightened paul, beckoning him forth.
paul, with much hesitation, approaches the man he inwardly senses is an apothecary of some sort. how he knew is a mystery to even paul. it seems he has met this man before, in passing perhaps, but does not usually associate with his type of character. the apothecary seized his hand suddenly, his body still hidden behind the sharp corner, and slowly rotated paul's hand until the palm lay open and ready to receive. his grip on the building's edge had appeared to paul to be bloodless, but now he realized he had been quite mistaken for his hands were warmed immediately within the apothecary's grasp. the strangers eyes never stray from paul's stricken face until a glass object is placed firmly into his awaiting hand. within his palm, paul sees, is a green vial, polished and reflective, with a cork stopper to keep the contents from spilling. he can hear a small amount of liquid stirring within. a questioning glance is shot at the apothecary whose wicked, smiling face gradually retreats back behind the corner and disappears.
instructions of every sort trickle into paul's empty brain, this liquid when taken, would help him inflict pain and wrath on his new enemy whose whereabouts became suddenly clear to him. these beings were from the same realm, the forbidden dimension from which this unknown enemy had spawned, the periphery! the escapee had broken the code, the rule that binds them to their world, and that could not go unpunished. the fugitive, according to the mentally intrusive plans, must be sought out, confronted and destroyed. paul was only too willing to comply.
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