A veil is being lifted from your eyes and the two men in front of you begin to melt into one single giant organism. No, not exactly. They are but appendages of an even bigger entity. An alien burrowed deep somewhere, probing America with its countless extremities.
Now, in the diner one of its mouths gorges on cherry pie, red jelly dangling from the oily lips; the other smiles leeringly to the waitress pouring a cup of coffee. She glances at you for a moment and you have no idea what she sees, but you can tell she's worried. Worried sick for you and for herself.
There's danger in these men and even if she can't sense their true nature it's clear they're up to no good. For a moment her shivers become your shivering so she backs off, forcing a smile. You can tell she's asking why don't you leave too.
You need to reach Galveston, it's important. Behind those clear blue eyes of yours, an image is stuck in your head: your child sleeping at sea, nestled between big bags of heroin, safe under the watchful eyes of the sailor. He's coming to bring your child to you. You'll meet on the docks and the sailor, a kindly old man, takes the money and hands you the baby. Gifts you some smack too, because he's just so kind.. Like Moses on the Nile, your baby floats on the Caribbean waters. Soon he'll be in your punctured arms. But there's some sacrifices to be made, isn't that true, Rose?
The alien leaves a few dollars on the table and grabs you by the arm. Its touch is acidic, burning, and so you scream. Its alien skin is trying to graft onto yours, sending electric stimuli coursing from who knows where. Their sly tongues and hollow bones are all being pulled from the same place, twitching with information they don't understand. You felt the same touch in Jack's bar. Jack too is the alien. So the waitress observes you stumble out of the diner following you with her eyes until you're hidden, curled up in the back of the car. It smells of tobacco and cheap whiskey. Filth everywhere, ashes and seats stained with unknown secretions.
It's a dilapidated land, the one you're being driven across: pools of anomalous colored water crack open the dirt, like dry skin ripping itself apart to make way for blood. No tree can suck on this earth to grow and the road is like a long line cutting a strange desert. A line punctuated by the same gas station every ten miles or so. We're not in Texas yet, are we? No,this is a film reel stuck in the projector: the same loop over and over. 26 seconds, 486 frames.
It's getting harder to stave off reality without some smack, and you can't hold it in any longer. So you roll that window down and spill your guts out. It leaves a trail, a brush of puke on the road. As cold sweat pours over your golden locks Garnett Mimms' voice comes out of the speakers like that of an Irish banshee howling from misty moors somewhere.
"Cry cry baby,
Cry baby, cry baby,
Welcome back home
Welcome back home"
That's an order right there and scalding hot tears sear down your cheeks as you fall on your side, face on the seat, trying with all your might to hold out a scream so that only a whimper comes out. Yet, you're still too loud: the alien has noticed you.
"The broad is getting worse; it's no good."
"Let her be, better she comes off it sooner rather than later." The driver emerges from the conjoined alien entity, with slicked back hair and a prominent jaw. His eyes from the rear view mirror come out like needles to pierce your belly.
"Here's the thing: junkies don't really care about anything other than the next hit", he continues. "Right now, our disgust doesn't register with her at all".
"Whose idea was it to bring her with us anyway?" said the other half, a tawny man with eyes bulging out under his protruding forehead. "There's plenty of whores on the road. She ain't even that hot."
He downs some pills. Pills manufactured by some other alien appendage and as they go down they return to the alien. Every organ is connected, every tube leads to another and every substance is always being processed to be put in use somewhere else. Eating, shitting, producing is all the same for the alien.
"The bitch can't die in the car, that's all I'm saying. It's bad for the job."
"Well I can always lose,
Don't you know nobody can love you the way that I do
Take the pain and the heartache too
Ah honey you know that I'll be around
When you need me"
Now the verses come out with Jack's voice. His sneering, mocking voice. His big nose sniffed you, the big nose of the alien entity. He sniffed you when you were young and clean. Babe you know, he used to say, sometimes a man has to go down for other men to go up. It's the way of the world. And then he'd put his hands around your arms. Right now your arms are holding off your belly from exploding in the car.
Some energy spills from it and shakes your body from head to toe. Time has stopped working correctly. Every intuition of linear succession melts into a muck of moments thrown at the walls of your consciousness. Acute encephalitis can do that too. Do you remember when you got that, Rose? Or was your name Melba back then? You were twelve and everyone was worried sick for you. That damp hospital bed, surrounded by aquamarine tiles cracked by time, it rattles and rattles incessantly. Mommy and daddy didn't want to lose another one and Mozelle and Grace took turns crying every night by your bedside. And look, the handsome president is here too. He's by your side in the car now. He's telling you to stay strong and be brave. His voice is like the soul of America talking: gentle yet firm. Jackie too, she smiles all pink and majestic. Countless people line each side of the road and cheer under the sky of Dallas. Can you spot the alien among them?
Then the president's head explodes and you're thrown back into your hospital bed, covered in brain matter. Irish catholic brain of the finest stock. A scream erupts from your mouth. The meds don't work, says your pa, as he storms out of the room to find the goddamn doctor. The doctor puts his hand over your face, his alien touch saps all the sweat from your cheeks and leaves a pulsating red mark. He's the entity in the car, he's the bullet in your head on a road somewhere. And you’re trying to tell the doctor about the president, and how sorry you are. But he’s not listening: right now he’s busy talking to Jack. This is the alien readjusting its organs, reorganizing its processes. He says that there are cries coming from below
“Can’t you hear?” he says to the doctor while he slams his head against the wall.
The car stops abruptly throwing the film reel out of the projector and now there's only a blank strip scrolling endlessly. The entity had enough of your screams and cries; it grabs you by the legs one last time before leaving you in the cold. No one to help a poor girl drenched in president's blood. Looking into the west there's a pile of suitcases full of dresses and costumes. You wish you'd never worked for the Blue Angel. She's flapping her wings, flying towards the sun that is slowly rising as you bleed on the pavement and looks at you with a terribly disappointed face. She’s not listening. Nobody is ever listening.
-- Vin likes to write and listen to music. He's got a substack with nothing to read on it.