Short Sharp shock....
“Jone y El Grumo....” *
I open my eyes to a shooting pain, shooting stars, a tumbling brook, and discover myself, legs folded under me, all akimbo, soaked in something, foul, acid, acrid smelling, right here in a gutter. There’s an image there of an open car door on my right, but I’m not focussing that well, it’s all kind of blurred nigh time white. White door. A sick anaemic yellow light illuminates, vaguely, tatty aged brownish seats and trim and this universe takes my breath away and I cough and choke back something rather bitter sick tasting and try to move my arms and think about trying to curl into a foetal ball, but nothing works and there are words in my head that say,
“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”
And I think to say them out loud but I can make no sound and suddenly I realise I just don’t care any more because, a rather calm and collected voice floating between my ears advises me I can’t possibly feel any more pain than the pain I’m suffering already, but a cackling black clad character is marching backward and forward in my head, spitting out cheerily from somewhere in my battered memory,
“Don’t you believe it, baby, just don’t you believe it!....”
I blink. Something tells me I should blink furtively, play dead. I blink, I force my eyes shut and will them to stay shut, and it seems like an eternity, fat chance, but I just don’t feel anything now, not anxiety, not sickness, just emptiness and an unreasonable calm as I drive up to the checkpoint,
“I love Jone, I love her so much....”
“Stop the fucking car, shithead.”
I pull on the handbrake and punch the button to shut down the Daciaelectric’s systems and the car hums into silence.
“Out of that fucking car, cunt, right this instant....”
I close my eyes tight shut and reach for the pull up handle to open the door. I cough and choke back something rather bitter sick tasting and want, have an overwhelming desire, to open my eyes to catch a glimpse of stars enough to make me feel so tiny, so insignificant I no longer am but, when I do blink, I see the moon there, right there, bobbing about right in front of my face making me feel quite faint and uncontrollably dizzy all over again. And then I think I hear a voice from light years away and, quite by chance, my eyes focus close to and there’s Peter, the goddamned beautiful, beautiful shithead, goddamned Peter, Bug Eyed Peter, and the bloody idiot is crying his stupid stupid blue English eyes out. The moon is filling the curb, the goddamned gutters with, with rivers of tumbling water. The moon is crying for me, and the voice has brought my name back to me from somewhere out there in the infinite, has given me my name back, my name back and my world, my little bit of beautiful, gorgeous world too, so I am crying too because you always have to cry for someone who’s willing to throw it all away, again and again, to save you, in spite of it all.
While Bug Eyed Peter lifts me into our battered Megane, I turn this thought, over and over and over again, deep inside my head,
“Suicide! This is tantamount to suicide....my love, they’ll do for you what they’ve done for me twice over....tantamount to suicide....”
And, as Peter pushes the back of the passenger seat into its reclining position, the pain of these ideas surpasses the pain of my beating and the pain of him strapping the seatbelt over my chest. I grimace and let out a low, guttural groan.
“I know, I know lover, let’s see if we can get ourselves home in one piece.”
And the Megane had a panoramic roof and the moon, and the stars and the universe took my breath away, so my first words to Peter, precious Bug Eyed Peter, were not about how much I loved him, how much I adored him, but,
“You can read my mind, can’t you....”
* A good deal of the inspiration for this “SPACE JUNK” series was drawn from a painting titled “JONE Y EL GRUMO”, by the painter David F. Brandon. I would like to thank him for permission to use a detail from this painting as an illustration in “SPACE JUNK, PART ONE, AFTER THE BEATING”.
I hope Brandon will forgive me for the extensive use I have made of the title of his artwork in my written work and, I have to say that “SPACE JUNK” could well have been titled, in honour of the painting, “JONE Y EL GRUMO”. Thank you Mr Brandon, "THE PRETTY GIRL" has found her name.
Click on this text to view the most recent version of Brandon’s painting.
Bashir B. Sherpa.
No comments:
Post a Comment