Drawing Dead

by JJ DeCeglie

  Of your blood-soaked grave.

  And I drove and drove and bled and bled and Lexy bled with me and we held hands and sang stupid songs and she was as young and as beautiful and she was ever was or would be and the sea breezes blew and the traumatized earth twisted and she hula-hooped naked while I made us drinks and then in bed she cringed at first but not for long as soon she grew and was like an inexhaustible panting inferno that ate me whole and then scorched the city to the floor leaving you lingering and choking on the neon embers and we bled and bled and drove and drove and it took hours upon hours but we made it by about sunset as the shadows grew strapping and were infused with golden strings of a dying star and I could smell the grass getting evening dewy and the dirt doing the same underneath and the sweat on her skin sweet as the taste in her mouth and still we bled and bled and bled and bled and parked in the lot of her high school and yeah it was strange that she had been menstruating when she’d decided to cut open her wrists and bleed out gushing in my bath and it was confounding to me that I loved her like nobody else I ever had…platinum blonde Lexy lively in my lap, biting on my biceps, tonguing at my teeth, weeping in a corner and scratching at my eyes, they’d just let all that bloody water down the fucking drain, what else could they do, what could any of us do, then or now or ever…she would have been sixteen this winter…the slack-jawed law couldn’t do or prove shit, the fact I’d been fucking her for over six months made so easily for hilarity, for misery; two more years and I could have taken her away forever, instead all I can do now is bleed and laugh and heckle, and in all probability kiss my own damned ass in dumbfuck hell.

  Author’s Note

  I was near death, or at least it fucking felt that way. Holed up in a Thai hotel room somewhere in Udon Thani. Middle of nowhere as far as I was concerned. I saw nothing of the place. Instead swam in nil but sweat and nausea. Showering occasionally, trying to hold down water, the rare attempt at fresh fruit or plain rice. I’d gotten food poisoning while in Pai, which is in the North. Had been backpacking my balls off up until then. Then suddenly stricken for two days straight in bed with fever dreams pounding, spooling in my skull. Not to mention all the expulsion and excretion prior. Stuck on a filthy mattress, glued down in a bamboo hut sitting there amongst the glorious gold and green of the rice paddies. The sun refusing to not swelter. Rats running about the rafters and fireworks for some reason unending all through the night.

  I rose on the third day.

  Summoned the courage to split.

  Man the ride down and across was worse than hell. Hour after hour fighting the sickness and dread as the van I rode in threatened to cannon us off every sheer curving cut it could. The driver was a merciless madman. Veering, careening, take chance after chance as my gut and mind rocked oh so close to disaster and ordeal.

  I cursed anyone who spoke to me, anyone who looked in my direction.

  Made a quick overnight stopover in Chiang Mai to make sure I’d regained my rattled composure.

  I hadn’t, but stoical and stupid pressed the fuck on.

  Like a hellsent hangover that just would not quit the curse persisted unremitting.

  But I was determined to get to Vientiane in Laos.

  Everything would be better there.

  I promised it to myself, and started to believe it.

  I just had to shake this terrible aftermath of the illness.

  This unrelenting black poison in my blood that lingered all quiet, rearing violently in hurtful attacks like a wild animal vicious out of the scrub.

  At about three a.m, half-dead in the hotel room I switched on the TV and watched awhile.

  I missed the start and fell asleep before the end, but portions stuck real good.

  Shards of glass in my skull. Shrapnel in my bones.

  It was a neo-noir film, “Kill Me Again” co-written, and solely directed by a man named John Dahl.

  The first in a trilogy which includes, the modern classics “Red Rock West” and the “The Last Seduction”.

  I found all this out much later.

  At the time I did not even know the title.

  In fact the next morning I wondered how much I’d dreamed and how much was real.

  This was in between vomiting up breakfast and dreading what would occur at lunch.

  All the while hoping hard that I could survive another bus trip and get my ass to Laos.

  This was 2007.

  And for the record I was still suffering five days later in Vang Vieng.

  Fighting occasional brutal bouts.

  But by Luang Prabang in the north...I was all better man.

  I wrote “Drawing Dead” in 2011.

  In Melbourne.

  I consider it an original, personal and perverse reinterpretation.

  DRAWING DEAD ©2011 by JJ DeCeglie.

  No part of this text may be reproduced without the express permission of the author.