Other Worlds Presents: Incorporeal
[Chapters 1-5] [Chapters 6-9] [Chapters 10-13]
14
The house looks like the one I was last born in, not the one I grew up, or any after to ever after. It’s small. My way through is breezy and the drafts have not gotten better. The tree looks familiar, all sparkling and soft lights. I fell through that once. Not that, nor many before that. But one back there, somewhere.
Up the stairs and into the bedroom. There’s a gun there. Like there was before. I don’t like looking at it, even though it can’t hurt me now. Under the bed are some things. Smells like pictures. Scented ways to get tied up. I don’t find what I’m looking for.
Wrong house. Wrong time.
15
Down the street near the church, and I’m swarmed by jet jeps. They pierce what’s left of me, filling me with ink and swirls. None down to zero, and half luck to go. Just that time.
Here come the grables, gnashing and gashing fucks livin’ and dead. Tearing up the street that looks like home once, now gone dead once, what with the jobs gone and the Great White Hope swung by a rope.
Here come the shaders and the noctwhiles, sippin’ on gin and juice, leashes in hand, and teeths in pockets. They wanna fuck.
16
Hey yo Patience, they go. Wanna piece of swag? There’s that derby meat and the things that make you go beep beep beep. Big Creme Fulton fill you up in a mushroom plume. Boom.
I say no thanks. Busy gettin’ stung.
They say they ain asking. Which I knew. Makes no difference.
First shader drops a grable after them, but the other grables give them trouble. The other shaders and the noctwhiles float on. Toward me.
I’m filled with ink, heavy and holding me to the ground. I was here before. A kid held down by another kid. Kids. Here comes the pain. That’s how it went. Lucky I can’t feel any more.
17
What’s this? they go. Petals and pedals and roots and routes. Dem some young shits what within. Better than this priney ass prune right here. Patience you old and busted, your weak ass.
I don’t mind, but I don’t like the other thoughts, the ones drawing lines from here to there. It’s an itch in the ink, like a spill gone vein.
Be seein’ you, a shader goes. And they’re gone.
I’m weighted down, to the ground.
Grables come and eat the jets. I would pet them for why? But they scramble on, chewing and chompin’ as they do, growin’ and showing their size from those dark flies ingested.
I’m up, still heavy with ink and itch.
End of Part 1
