--Earth and Sky--

It’s amazing how well you can hide three bullet wounds if you cling to yourself and act afraid of the world. Its midmorning now, I can tell. The city is moving about with frivolous activities as I slowly walk along, to my “doctor.”

He’s an underground, overpriced man, Dr. Sphynx. Personally I hate the fuck, but he does a nice work in his 10th floor apartment. Yeah. It’ll probably cost a good $1,000 for three bullets. Oh well, I say, I’ve a suitcase with $500,000 unmarked bills in it. I needed a new pair of shoes, anyhow.

Time passes and stress floats away as smoke rises from a freshly lit cigarette. All my pain ignites in the flame of my Zippo lighter, being sucked away to fester within, before being blown about as an airborne disease.

Three knocks and a light kick on the door let my doctor know its business.

Greeting me with the same rough Arabic accent that reeks of illegal immigrant, Dr. Sphynx speaks, “Oh! James! Come in come in my friend! What are we fixing today? A few broken bones from a fight, yes?”

I just showed him my gunshot wounds while taking a drag from that cigarette. I guess the loss of blood made me light headed, but my flag of defiance made it seem more natural, comforting.

The “operating room” was originally meant to be a bedroom, as it seems. A closet to the right of the room’s door holds various drugs. I never asked whether he was a dealer or just a hardcore dope head. I didn’t care; that shit kills you. The rest of this room is unkempt and revolting. All the while the bench I am to lie on and the tools of the trade are sparkling white and silver—a beam of holy light in the dankest corner of hell itself.

Once again my eyes gaze up into a circular skylight. Overcast. It figures. And as white hot pain courses through my nervous system I come to damn Dr. Sphynx’s lack of anesthetics. The ungodly amount of time this procedure took nearly forced me to loose my mind until I came to realize it left me long ago. A bullet dropping into a pan of distilled water threw me into a dream.

I saw the clouds swirl into the operating room, or perhaps, it was my cigarette trailing smoke upwards, as it had been laying idle in my right hand. Another bullet drops; my dream state dampens.

I’m walking through them. They all come to die and unravel as mysteries in dark allies. This city is nothing but alleys, all intercrossing in a confused web of smoke, lit by random streetlights.

There I am, stopped, standing, once again, outside of my comic book store. I swear, I’m just another comic, just he concept writer quit when the illustrator fucked the concept writer’s wife. Dark alleys and mysteries. The last bullet falls, though; a raindrop muffles it.

Silent tears of god. He’s watching me, and doesn’t like what he sees. All I do is puff on a cigarette and stare into the sky. Earth and the sky. To live in both is to be free. Truly…To is bliss.

The dream fades as bandages tie me down to reality with a cold sensation of emptiness; an inescapable gap within me through which all is fucked away.

My dream fades completely with that immigrant’s ballistic onslaught of idiotic words composed of a lack of common sense, “You almost died, Mr. James. Be careful! Julius might loose major business, and that is a no no, my friend! Oh ye, yes, yes…Business...You know the price?” That moron’s ranting never ceases sometimes.

“Business…” I repeated to myself once or twice before removing $1,000 from the Black Briefcase Bank. “Well, see you…” I said while closing the briefcase and tossing my cigarette into the distilled water after giving it a goodbye drag, kind of like a husband kisses his wife goodbye before leaving off; working for the day.


--Light And Dark--