Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  The first car has got to be doing forty when it hits the monster and sends it spiraling crazily, like a poorly tossed football, into the opposing lane. The wide receiver is a ten-ton semi. There is no time to brake. Or scream.

  Ground-level close-up of all those wheels.

  Omigod.

  They’re so terribly fast…

  And the head of the thing that was Joshua Proctor explodes in a shower of luminous gore. No longer the painter of bleeding flowers, of crystals and beasties with knowing smiles, this thing that death-kicks upward, catches on the chassis and drags like a broken muffler. No more the embellisher of human core visions and painter of blushes on warm feminine flesh, now painting the streets with garish smears of meat and radiance. The legs snap off just above the ankles. This journey is ended. As if to lend this emphasis, the truck swerves suddenly to squeeze viscera from either open end of the flopping carcass and mash it flat under rubber rollers.

  No matter that he’s left his indelible mark on the world, pressed pavement-tight and ever-glowing. The quest is finished, and he has failed.

  And, of course, she is there. We recognize her instantly, although we’ve never seen her before; standing alone in the crowd, with the bright tears coarsing down her cheeks. Bright tears, mirroring the stupid brilliance of his remains, reflecting his soul as she turns, defeated now as well, and staggers half-dead into the empty city night…

  Shit.

  Okay, so I’ll stay on this side of the street, dammit. I know how the fucking Fates like to deal with quitters. And I hate pathos, believe it or not. Damned if I’m gonna be the object of it in my own friggin’ movie.

  It’s just that it’s so hard, man. It really is so very very mercilessly hard to just keep going like this that I just can’t believe it’s happening sometimes…

  But I’ve stood here long enough. There are enough people around here to choke a sperm whale,” and I know you’re out there somewhere. Ol’ Josh hasn’t wasted himself yet, darlin’l And he’s been waiting all his life to meet you.

  So don’t make him wait too much longer, okay?

  I don’t know how much longer he can take it.

  Mmmmm, this is good mocha java. I savor it between lungfuls of streamlined tobacco, eyeballing the girl at the very next table, and I think about compensations (of which there are many). The joint I wound up sharing with those high-school kids detached me somewhat. Things look a little less bleak now. Hey! It’s time to rethink again. Think about…

  Compensations. Perhaps it would be a good idea to (long as I’m sittin’ here) count the old blessings for a change! I pull out a fine-point marker and the trusty pocket sketch pad, and I briefly jot down the following:

  YOU OUGHTA BE ASHAMED, BUNKY! LOOK WHAT YOU GOT!

  Because I’m an artist (also because I’m stoned, and not a little crazy for starters), I take the time to put this in a word balloon and issue it from the mouth of my best friend Linda, all white-robed and smiling angelically with a nifty little halo over her head. This takes a bit more time than I’d originally intended, of course, but I’m absorbed while it’s happening.

  Now I look at the clock on the dark burnished wall and say “Shit!” out loud, omnidirectionally. No big deal, but I’d only planned to stop in for a quick cup. Oh, well… maybe the Great White Goddess will drop by for some cappuccino. I could certainly dig another cup o’ dis! My eyes cast around for the waiter, come up instead with the dark burnished girl at the next table. She is looking at me. I engage her glance. She pulls it away. I smile at the air, then look back to my sketch pad.

  Linda’s more sensible than I am, really. That’s why we couldn’t hold it together as lovers. I look at her face, play some scenes in my mind, and then remember what I wanted to be writing. Okay! Smooth movin’, Josh! Let’s see…

  1. You’re selling.

  2. You’ve got a little more than enough money.

  Okay, we got that covered. I will eat tomorrow.

  What else?

  3. My work is good.

  Yeah, man. After all those years of doubt, of quivering fragile inquiries as to the quality of my material, I can finally sit back feeling good. I’ve learned to reproduce what I see, precisely. And I’ve learned to see so much…

  4. I love my work.

  5. My consciousness seems to be expanding nicely.

  Yeah, great. But I seem to have changed perspectives here. When I started out, Linda was talking. Now I’m talking. I create CHAOS from the swirling subconscious! Ha…

  It’s because I was thinking about Linda again; and, truthfully, all of the realjy great women I’ve managed to come across (or cum in) over these last several years. WHY WASN’T I SATISFIED? I ask myself for the umpteen-millionth time …

  “Can I get you another cup?” asks the waiter, appearing magically to my left. I jolt upright and turn, surprised, to look at him. He laughs and says, “Hey, I didn’t mean to terrify you …”

  “It’s alright,” I say, hurtling back to my body. “Yeah, I’ll take another one.” He is checking out my list and smiling, wry. He nods twice when I finish speaking and then splits, tossing one backward glance before disappearing from view.

  Why wasn’t I satisfied? I ask myself more calmly. Better prepared to answer reasonably in this less-feverish state of mind, I pause to consider.

  Earlier on in life, I decided that no one woman could possibly do it all; further, that no one woman could be reasonably expected to even try. Leading, of course, to the subsequent decision that I’d have to work out some arrangement with a bunch of ‘em, tailoring each one-on-one relationship to its unique matrix of matching parts. You know: I’d ski with the ones who were into skiing; I’d eat Chinese with the ones who were into Chinese, Italian with the pasta-lovers; I’d share cozmic revelations with the more spiritually inclined, drink toasts with the tibblers, take trips with the acid-heads, eat meat with the carnivores and tofu with the Aquarians. I’d share my wit with similar senses of humor, my art with similar tastes in culture, arid my bed with similar… appetites. The best of all possible worlds, right? One big marriage to all womankind, most assuredly made in heaven.

  But it didn’t work out that way. Not at all. I even got a chance to try, something that most people never get; I spent two years trying to ride Enlightened Polygamy, only to find it was a wild horse that refused to be tamed. And you know why?

  Sex. Pure and simple. Immediately, the wet funk of genital interaction slopped itself all over everything that happened. Alchemical transformation took place. Previously innocuous and unrelated events took on new meaning somehow, always sinister and usually false. Ski trips were no longer ski trips, for example: they were excuses for shtupping Suzanne in front of a big fireplace (only once, in fact… months after the accusation). Not being able to see someone for three weeks meant that I no longer wanted to see them at all, but that’s alright (sob sniffle), they’d survive. It was utterly insane, an experiment gone mad: half the time belly-up and ready for mauling. I could…

  Ah, but the waiter has returned with a big steaming goodie. I say “Thanks” as he sets it down before me, and dig in my pocket for change.

  “No problem. I make my living by taking orders.” It’s such an offhand comment that it makes me laugh. He said it because he knows I can handle it; already, he’s back to studying my work-in-progress, looking as though he’d never spoken. I like this guy.

  “You haven’t gotten very much further on this. Are you running out of blessings, or what?” he adds casually, that same smile on his face.

  “Naw. I just cruised my biocircuitry for a minute. Spacin’ out. You know.” He nods while I give up on the concept of change and pull out my wallet.

  “This is really good stuff here,” he says, pointing to Linda in particular. “You are an artist by trade?” I nod affirmation; he acknowledges it with another one of his own. “Great,” he cheerfully concludes.

  “Here, man. Keep the change,” I say, handing him a five. He goes wow and rea
lly lights up. I flash him the patented winkansmile and hold out my fist, thumbs up. He thanks me very much and sorta dances away. I watch him, while my mind slides over to the subject of friendship; and from there, back into the past…

  I lost lot of friends with that two-year foray into The Unknown. A lot of bitterness, a lot of hurt, and a lot of confusion. It forced me to a new set of conclusions, perhaps wilder and more dangerous than the last. And it set me on this quest.

  Quest of the Perfect Love…

  I take a tentative sip of my java. It’s perfect. I tingle. A cigarette comes to my lips and ignites (purely mechanical act); my thoughts tumble inward.

  Perfect Love. It wasn’t Linda, much as I love her. She was the closest I’ve come, but the differences were glaring, irreconcilable: we kept totally different hours, and she was far gentler than I. My outrage still frightens her more than I like.

  Trish. She was wilder, more than kept up with me in the all-nighter department, and was a barrel of laughs besides. But when she asked me to tie her up, I hung it up instead.

  (Felt like a prude that time, yes indeedee; but the idea’s just too fucking alien to me. I’m sorry.)

  Then Patty let me know what bondage was really all about, and I’m sure that I’d have been better off with Trish. Because nothing is worse… a hand grenade up the ass couldn’t be worse… than the million tiny hooks that the love-loonies wield. That Patty used on me in our hideous year-anna-half together. They’re the kind that you don’t feel ‘til they’re in; and they don’t hurt until the first time that you try to pull away.

  Ah, the love-loonies. Those miserable scumsuckers. You don’t know how deeply I hate what they do. They know that the hooks go in all the soft places, the weak spots that only a lover can know. They seek out the puffy underdeveloped portions of your personality and then sshhHHHTOOK! The hook sinks in so easily, and holds so snugly…

  … and it won’t let go without ripping a nice big steaming chunk out of you. It won’t let go just because you’re getting sore. No, boy. It won’t let go just because you’re crying out and the blood is starting to trickle from all those ugly little cracks. You’re gonna bleed, baby! Bleed, before those bastards will let go of you. You’re gonna bleed from every lousy hole that’s capable of it, baby; gonna take every ounce of will you’ve got to endure the fucking pain, to take it beyond any point of reason, to keep pullin’ and keep pullin’ while the million tiny hooks just bide their time, happily hangin’ on, groovin’ to the high-tension hum of invisible wires that absolutely will not snap, waiting for you to end the symphony with a final supreme effort, with an enormous flurry of sucking staccato notes as the hooks finally yank free, studding you with a million wet puckering wounds that will never fully heal.

  Yeah, man. And to top it all off, there’s the fact that they really do love you, insofar as they understand the phenomenon (precious little, I can tell you); they put in the hooks because that’s what they know, that’s all they know about love, damn them: the fear, the clutching, and the redmeat punishing-of-imperfections that underlie their fatuous, wide-eyed blissy-wiss.

  At any rate: because they love you and because they’re human and because you are less than perfect yourself, you love them as well. Though I crawled away from Patty like a savaged dog, like a leper, like an Afghani villager with nothing but Soviet shrapnel in his belly… though she and her kind have so thoroughly defiled the name of love that I cringe every time a voice intones it… though I hate the wretched motherfuckers and everything they so blindly stand for with a passion that leaves me wondering why I never got around to killing… I still love ‘em.

  I guess that makes me a real nice guy, huh? Or a bottomless fool. Either way, Patty: if I learned one thing from your guided tour of the goddam pits, it was that you’re never too smart to get hooked. You’re always capable of that killing stupidity. I was watching out for vampires. I really was. But I was tired, and I let down my guard for a second, thinking I was cool. And you got me.

  Never again, man. I’m never letting it down again, man. Not until I know for sure. It’s too damn easy to crawl in bed with the wrong woman and let those fluids fly.

  Back again, I chug half the cup and kick up a smokescreen. My eyes return to the list I was making, and my hand moves to set down these new illuminations:

  6. I got away from Patty (love all bloodied, but intact)

  7. I will not give up.

  Laughter turns my head. It’s naughty-girl stuff (one of my favorite kinds), resonantly issued from the table next door. The dark girl’s been joined now by two other women; she’s still the most striking of the lot.

  I watch her face as she laughs. I marvel at the exquisiteness of her features, the strength in the lines that life has carved across them. Her eyes catch the sparkle of a shaded lamp briefly, and I decide in that instant to draw her.

  I light a new cigarette on the last sparks of the old and then put Grampa Filter to rest (a modern metaphor for reincarnation), while my other hand flips the page and proceeds to draw. Meanwhile, the criteria of my quest goes chikka-chikka through the ol’ data banks.

  Looks? chikka-chikka-chik. Yeah, I definitely like good looks, as my marker so reverently testifies. But I’m not real picky. No particular dimension or hues, no particular hairstyles or dress codes on my checklist. I’ll never find her in a computer printout of nose lengths and nipple circumferences. That beauty behind the skin, able to shine through even the lumpiest countenance, is what I seek.

  Mental attributes? chikka-chikka-chik. Yeah, I definitely like mental attributes (chuckling, as I sketch in the character lines on her face). Wit, keenness of insight, a logic not so constricted as to exclude the towering absurdity; a dexterity with symbols, a grasp on their meaning, a taste for the eternal. (All of these things appearing in the girl’s likeness. Am I just embellishing them, or are they really there?)

  Kindness. Gentleness. Inner strength. A sense of wonder, of harmony with the rest of creation. Honesty. Courage. Do I see those, too? chikka-chikka-chik. My hands begin to sweat. I put down the marker for a moment, mind behind the damp forehead reeling, and wipe myself off. Nicotine. Java. The girl at the next table. A hot groin, setting my juices to a boil.

  I am terribly close to something: something important. That sense of proximity hangs in the air, thick as dope smoke at a Grateful Dead concert. Thought impulses flash through my head faster than I can decode them, going chikka-chikka-chikka What? a-chikka-chikka ASK HER ikka-chikka OMI ikka-chikka GOD, I chikka-chikka THINK a-chikka-chik SHE MIGHT a-chik SHE MIGHT a-chik I SHOULD a-chikka-chikka-chikka WHAT IF IT’S…

  I snap back into the room, and instantly freak. She’s getting ready to pay her bill; the waiter approaches her now. Hey, man! I thought you were my friend! Break your leg on the way over or something! Detain her! Just a… oh, shit. I pick up the marker and furiously darken in the portrait’s hair. The wild lines give her an adventurous air. We hurtle down dreamslopes together, dodging trees and laughing at Fate, chikka-chikka-chikka. My mind floats to…

  Interests. Wild movies, wild music, wild books and art and theater and dance. Philosophy. Metaphysics. Wholism and synthesis and the global transformation movement in general. The environment. Law, and the absence of justice. The future. The past. And most of all, the ever-present: site of all-there-is. (I wonder… does she share these concerns?)

  Then she has paid, and is rising to leave. A testicle-sized lump rises in my throat, unbidden; I half-rise out of my seat in alarm. The rest of the goddam details will be there for your head to fill in, darlin’. It is time for me to…

  … very rapidly …

  … sign my name (and address and phone number) to the back, just as she and her friends move their shapely ways toward me. It is a classic moment of split-second timing, definitely one to fossilize and file for the generations a-comin’: the last penstroke, just in time for the first footstep to resound in the floorboards at my feet. Flipping the page over and looking up just in time t
o catch her eyes and hold them for a second. Just in time for me to open the floodgates of patented Joshua Proctor charm and say, “Hey …!”

  Just in time to watch those precious features twist into a mixture of annoyance and contempt. Just in time to let my picture-bearing hand petrify in midair as that soft and surely God-sent woman/child nails me with those eyes and says, “Aw, just fuck off, would’ja?”

  Just in time to see her rope one arm around one of her woman-friends, who gives me the kind of look usually reserved for lumps of shit on living room floors.

  Just in time to watch her stalk past, leaving a blast of crypt-warm air in her wake, and go out the door.

  The picture hangs useless and stupid in my hand. I give it one last quick appraisal. It sucks. I tear it into little pieces and immediately wish I hadn’t (it wasn’t that bad). “I guess that wasn’t her,” I say to myself, preparing to stick the shreds of vision into my pocket.

  The door opens again.

  I turn, slowly, to look.

  And you walk in.

  I am seeing you; and though there is no thought involved… no thought, no thought at all… I know that you are seeing me. The universe (save us) has locked in stasis: beer frozen halfway between tap and mug, incomplete words dangling in midair. This moment exists for us alone.

  For you and I.

  We each take a first, tentative step toward each other (me not even fully out of my chair) and then stop: stupidly, mortally afraid. Though no more doubt could possibly remain, it’s a whole lifetime of doubt and fear that sends a rational mind into a desperate flurry of brattling rationalization: what if it isn’t her, you know how close you came a minute ago to fucking up again, what if it is her and you are no longer worthy… ?

  I am caught in the sensory distortion of that logical maelstrom, paralyzed by that which passes for reason. Reeling in fear of my heart’s ultimate betrayal, because my heart keeps screaming it’s TRUE, dammit! It’s TRUE! My eyes snap shut, focus with insane clarity on the brilliant subatomic dance, and I think omigod, this is too intense to be just another dead-end street. This has got to be, it’s got to be…