pariah
02-01-2009, 04:29 PM
Muertikai's not dead,
Just a man of the live sea;
Dripping with the heads,
And bodies of the women,
And bloody whiskey.
Cape n' collar of cowboys:
Those were hand-me-downs.
Under the bleak amber sky,
He was sipping rye,
Making rounds in his sphere town.
His steed knew this world
As a mechanical flow.
He watched it all fall;
He saw it bite it's own ass;
He never would know
Muertikai's new all-time low.
With him they all sank;
Drowned in friends, degenerates:
Degeneration:
Parasitic prostitutes
All at one low price:
Twenty-four, half-inch, black gears.
Where does the time go?
Muertikai was at the top,
Having walked on friends.
He saw his god start to stop,
When making amends.
The man broke through the mirror,
And fled through his rend.
His life flashed before his eyes.
Walking uniform,
Came his woman, his fam'ly,
And those he hated.
Unable to die today,
He joined the masses
To have what he was wanting.
All material,
They have one thing left to do:
And it won't happen.
pariah
02-01-2009, 04:30 PM
“Today, we do not gather here to execute a man, but to send a demon back to hell,” the sheriff wipes off the beads of sweat from his head and places his hat back on his head.
“This poor excuse for a man is a leech on society. His worthless, spineless body is not worth the dirt to bury or the coffin to put him in. He’s not worth the bullet that would go through his miserable brain. There was a good part of this man once, but it ran down the back of his mother’s leg and now, folks, we’re stuck with him.”
The sheriff presents the accused – a relatively thin and pale figure. Both of his eyes are black and his nose is broken in three places, ready to fall to the ground. The men of town had their turn with this despicable, poor excuse of a man. They put a hurt on him that sent a chill down to his bones.
Yesterday morning they found him in the brothel with the priest’s daughter. Her limp body was lurched on a couch when they found them together. He was still in a spell from the night before. They would have killed him there, but the town was in shock. A holy man’s daughter is the holiest of holy. She can’t be killed – she shouldn’t have been dead.
But on that Sunday morning there were no church bells or children playing. Instead there was the creek of wood as the accused and the sheriff stood on the stage.
As the sheriff speaks about the accused - who everyone called the tramp - the listening crowd was divided in their emotions. Some were so heart broken that the priest’s daughter was gone. Others were furious that this man was still breathing. And others just wanted to see an execution.
The sheriff stepped off the gallows and grabbed a fistful of dirt. He slowly let it slip through his fingers. He grabbed another chunk of dirt and spit a vile ball of saliva into it. He swaggered towards the gallows and shoved spit and dirt into the tramp’s mouth.
Some laughed.
But instead of spitting out the dirt the tramp began to chew. He gummed the earth throughout his mouth, while letting the saliva trickle down his chin. His Cheshire grin grew as he balled the dirt in his mouth and only then did he spit it out towards the crowd.
A huddle of older men moved towards the stage and told the sheriff their thoughts. This retched man was to be sent into the wild, without any chance of returning.
And so the tramp was put on a sick horse and an empty revolver was pressed into his waist. He was placed with the utmost care and someone even put a black duster on his head. A confused look crept onto the tramp’s face.
“What’s wrong with you people?”
Before the tramp could jump off the sick horse, the sheriff tied a rope onto the horse and the man’s hips. He was stuck to the horse, but he wasn’t going to take their forgiveness. He wanted to be killed. He wanted it to be over already.
“Fuck ya’ll! Do’ ya’ll know that girl t’was a whore. Her come’ hither eyes were the ones that made me bought all those drinks. Why do you think a priest’s daughter hangs out at a whorehouse all the livelong day? And on Sunday she walks among you like she’s some sort of goddamned saint. She was a dang wolf in sheep- ”
Before the accused could finish story, the sheriff put a shearing knife into the tramp’s gut. The blade pushed through his stomach, rupturing intestines, lungs and all. He left it in for a few seconds, before he rotated the blade. If the tramp was accused of mistreating women, the sheriff was surely making the tramp his own whore.
The horse was pointed towards the nothing – the empty horizon. They whipped it and it slowly trotted into the midday heat.
“Damn girl was no saint.”
Only the horse responded with a snort.
“She t’werent no priest’s daughter either. No virgin moves that way.”
Now the tramp was whispering to himself – the mouthful of blood made it difficult for him to talk anymore.
The ground was no longer sand, but a beautiful ocean. The girl was walking next to the horse. She was lying down on the couch where she fell asleep the night they spent together.
“Hey, wake up. They think I killed ya. C’mon git up.”
He splashes her with a whiskey bottle that isn’t there. The ocean washes her away and now he can’t feel the horse moving anymore.
He pulls for the empty revolver from his waist and pulls the trigger, but nothing.
His head bobs back and forth, but he can’t feel the horse anymore. A vulture landed on the horse a few miles out of town and he can feel it tugging on a vein or a piece of his intestine. But he can’t see it.
He can’t even remember her name.
pariah
02-01-2009, 04:33 PM
I rode the seven seas for you, I flew your plane, carried your flag, all I got was this alcoholism. I saw you in the river playing with the horse men. I found you in the bars flirting with him. I feel for you but you have no idea where I am, we slept together, I rode off half way trough, I'm sorry, really I am. I killed a man, for the fear he would wed you. A wedding is Wednesday, a fight on Tuesday. An urban cowboy is nothing but a queer that wares chaps and a ten gallon hat. Consider me machine, the same that loves and then kills... no thinking involved. You might be an illusion to the waves of booze I drink but baby you're my kind of gal.
They say to quit the hunt, but i need it, I want it. I hate you, but I need you... that ever going circle of love and death. I am the bringer! Behold the fold! shot in a clean second for loving my lover. you say "I have no interest in you, you fucked me and left no money." So I just stay in the background and see where you are, who you love, so I can hunt. Leaving no man behind, this town is almost dry, of men and drink. The cycle will run it's course; I drink, you fuck, I kill... more will eventually show, leaving me with endless enjoyment. In all honesty babe, I fucking loathe you. Obsession is funny thing, to kill for you is the only way I can kill, the only reason I wanna drink, the only thing I live for; to defend my love for you. I'll leave a sea of blood in times pass, red like my love.
It was the day I killed you, you told me you loved me and appreciated what I was doing for you. I smiled, shed a tear, then choked you.... I left my mark on your neck yet, I didn't kill you just then i waited. there was one man I wanted you to fuck, the one person that I wanted to kill but couldn't. He was a married man and didn't 'believe' in adultery. I fucked that harlot of a wife of his, a beautiful arrangement of sweat and saliva was exchanged we touched so genitally, our lip never touched, we're not in love. After the clouds parted, I cut her open with a serrated edge. she was beautiful.
I digress, this is about you and me darling, the day you died. you said "I love you", I said "you can't because I'm a killer and an urban cowboy." with a smug smile on my face that even Jack Nicholson would be proud of. I was right you didn't because you were indeed married to the love of money and other men. then you told me you were gonna go away, far away, a place where I would never find you. To my brilliant deduction I knew you were gonna kill yourself, my obsession sicked you and you were afraid I would go after the ones you actually loved... well it wasn't really my 'brilliant deduction', but a letter you had, your "Suicide note". You can't die by your own hands, so i would have to do it myself. You fucking whore, ruin my fun... you selfish... damn. I walked up those satires into that room you were staying at. Of course you were in the act of earning money, so I ended it quickly. A bullet to that fuckers head, don't believe in adultery my ass. I jump on your body smooth from the sweat. The smell of lady almost made me cum. This is no time for rape tough. I wrap my hands around your neck and you stop breathing, but I stop before you die. and I shoot you in the heart. I started to cry... but this is what had to be done, you took what I held dearest, had to take it back. Not my heart, my virginity.
pariah
02-01-2009, 04:34 PM
"We are gathered here today."
The congregation is spread out amongst the dusty corridors of town, that just a few years ago, was a ghost town. The place is called Driftwood, but it wasn't named by the people who lived their. The crows feet amongst their eyes, dirt and sand engrained in the bruises on their skin, stares that seem to mean they're never present all speak volumes of why the town is named Driftwood. If it doesn't, just look at the footprints as they filled into the borrowed chairs from the saloon: worn soles leaving unremarkable and unidentifiable impressions in the packed sand.
No one needs to be told what today is, because the platform made from nearly-rotten wood next to a casket gives it away. "We are gathered here today," the words continue as the preacher's poorly-knotted bowtie and cracked glasses give the impression of a broken man, but his voice bellows through the open and dead desert valley with an odd forcefulness compared to where they originate. Seated adjacent to him hidden under a torn, black veil is a woman, someone who recently made her way to Driftwood. It's customary to bring your dead with you when you make it to this town, but it doesn't always have to be a stiff body. It just so happens that in Katherine's case, there is a body.
As forceful as the preacher is, his words don't mean anything to Kat. Talking is not always communicating. Just as they leave her head, they flutter through the vacant minds of Driftwood, but it's time for Kat to talk. Time for her to talk about why she's here. Time for her to make her case as to how she wound up in Driftwood, like she's applying for residence in a town no one could conceivably want to live in. As she stands up to approach the podium, her stiff demeanor is a stark contrast to her beauty. Beneath the dirty and unwashed veil, a black dress she'd had waiting for this day that has suffered the harsh and unforgiving weather during the travel, her body has a curvy figure, while her eyes have a natural black shadow underneath them just inches above her full, pink lips, cracked from the dry and sandy wind. However, these are the things the population of Driftwood would be locked on for the next few minutes as she stood next to a ghastly picture overhanging a horizontal-laying casket with an open view.
"My name is Katherine," she started, her gaze locked onto the podium in front of her. "It doesn't really matter what you call me, though. That's not why I'm here."
Her eyes finally lifted and scanned through the audience. Her irii were an earthy and dark shade of brown, deep and piercing as her deep stare poured through the town. "I'm here because of Daniel," she continued. "While, the picture you're staring at next to me is not a self-portrait, Daniel was a hideous man. It took him dying to make me realize this, that this is what he wanted. He didn't care if he was ugly, he just wanted to be... ugly and with me and that would've been all."
Her lips began to whelp and her eye sockets clench and shed small tears as she continued. "It wasn't too long ago, I'd just got back into town and I was eager to see him. I loved Danny, and I missed him when I couldn't see him. I sat inside the car and I smelled something strange. It was smoke. I'm sure... it's nothing new, but I'd asked him to stop, so I was surprised to see him with cigarettes again. I was angry, but he turned his head and put his arm on my chair. He looked at me with his bright amber eyes, and just as his mouth began to open I felt a burning wave of liquor pour out onto my cheeks."
"He asked me what I had to sacrifice to be with him," she continued. "I couldn't think of anything, but I felt scared. Just as we left, Danny seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere when I noticed he had a strap on his arm. He'd always talked about buying a gun, but I never... I never thought he'd do it. I asked him why he had it, and he asked me what I thought he was going to use it for. Daniel never seemed to be displeased with the way things were, so I didn't think he was going to do anything drastic, but I knew he was acting strange. Then he began to pour himself onto me as if his soul could be licked clean from a shot glass."
Just as she continued, her words became a brush that painted the picture as accurately and detailed as if it were being relived. She felt like the narrator to both side of the dreams, her voice replacing Daniel's silenced mouth as she could feel the torn seats of his car, smell the ruined air conditioner spewing scents of burning motor oil, hear the low-level hum of some album by Earth (humming was all she could make of the band anyway). Her speech froze and her face became statuesque as the reality of the moment felt painful in a way that she wishes she could forget, but she knew that's not what Daniel wanted.
"What kind of person are you to ask me to make a sacrifice?" Daniel asked, his hands flying off of the steering wheel as he struggle to maintain a steady course with his knees.
"I thought you cared about me, Daniel," said Kat, sinking into her seat as her stomach began tying itself in knots.
The point of hiding the cigarette suddenly became lost on Daniel as he pulled it to his lips. Kat's guilt-worn stare just felt like pointless ambience to him at the moment as he wondered how slow he was going, how much longer it would take them to get to Driftwood.
"Daniel," started Kat, nervously reaching her hands to his steering wheel. "You should let-"
She was cut off with a pop from Daniel's hand.
"Why are you grabbing my steering wheel, Kat?" he asked.
"Because you're fucking drunk, Daniel," she said, shrinking back into her seat as she caught the sight of Daniel's leather holster. "What's that?"
"You know all those times I told you I was going to get a conceal and carry permit?" he asked.
"Oh my god," she shrieked, horrified as her hands covered her gaping jaw. "W-what are you going to do to me?"
"Oh Jesus Christ, Kat," he started. " What do you think I am, a murderer? Are you really that narcissistic? That wet and moist spot between your legs has been one of the most fun things I've experienced in a while, why would I want to kill you?"
"You are such an asshole, Daniel," she said, batting back tears.
"No," responded Daniel with a blunt town. "I'm honest."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, disgusted.
"Look at you," he retorted flatly.
"What about me?" she asked, scathing.
"I haven't asked anything from you, just that you stay with me," he started. "I've always been happy to be with you, but I never had any illusions about things. I never wanted to whisk you away to some chateau where everything would be perfect, and I would be your bronze, statuesque god of our realm; waking you up with a kiss and meal in the morning, worshipping you during the day, and making love to you at night. I just wanted someone to share my life with, and I wanted to share it with you. You're not like that. You need me to stop smoking. Why is that? For my health? You drink on a bidaily basis, so it can't be that."
"It smells so bad," she said in a hushed tone.
"Oh, so you want me to give up my vice because it causes you discomfort?" he continued. "Look at the fucking dent in this hood, Katherine. You did that. You did that driving drunk. It's going to cost me money I don't fucking have to get this shit hammered out. There's also one small issue: you could've fucking killed yourself. Yet, I never asked you to stop drinking. I never asked you to change. I was just happy to see that you were alright; that nothing happened to you."
"Daniel, you're drunk right now!" she said, stopping him. "And you're going way too fast, please slow down, Danny."
"We're only going seventy-five," he commented, passing the speed marker that reads fourty-five. "..And don't fucking do that.
"Do what?" she asked, puzzled and scared.
"'Daniel.' 'Danny'." he answered with an annoyed tone. "You're so fucking manipulative."
"What are you even talking about?" she asked.
"How you say my name tells me exactly what you want me to do," he began. "I'm 'Daniel' when I should feel ashamed. I'm 'Danny' when I should feel submissive. I'm 'Dan' when you don't have the time of day to pronounce my name. Don't think making me feel like your pet is going to get you what you want this time."
"So?" she retorted, scathingly. "You've called me 'Kat' and 'Katherine' tonight too, you know."
"I'm well aware of what you're saying," said Daniel flatly.
"Oh?" asked Kat. "What exactly am I saying, then?"
"That I'm guilty, too," continued Daniel, calmly.
"Guilty?!" she asked, startled. "Of what?"
"Of being a dishonest person," he said, his manner resigning itself to an eerily calm demeanor.
"You lied to me?" she asked.
"That's not what I mean," said Daniel. "That's being shallow."
"I.. don't understand," she said, softly and scared.
"Of course you don't, Kat, said Daniel. "But you're going to."
"What exactly am I going to understand?" asked Kat nervously.
"You're going to understand that you and I have been ruined," he started. "We've been turned into these passive aggressive tools of whatever, where we can't even communicate."
"What are we doing right now?" she asked, tears beginning to leak from her snow white eyes and porcelain-pale cheeks.
"Talking isn't always communicating," he goes on. "You and I are complex, and wrongfully so. Why do you have to go through these subtle nuances like fitting my name in the context of what you want to get from me? Why can't you just tell me to slow down? Why not just admit that you're scared, because we're going eighty-nine miles per hour down the highway?"
"Alright, alright, you've scared me, now please slow down!" she squealed.
"I can't," responded Daniel, calmly.
"What do you mean you can't?!" she shrieked, trying hard to drown out the roar of the engine. "Daniel, you could kill someone!"
"That's not what you're worried about," he continued.
"You could hurt yourself, honey!" she continued desperately.
"Oh please," said Daniel with a laugh.
"We could crash and I could die, okay?! Are you happy?!" she screamed, wiping the tears from her eyes and trying to swallow the lump in her throat.
"That's what I mean, Katherine," he responded.
"I... I don't understand any of this, Daniel..." she started. "Please? Please don't do this, sweetie?"
"Oh, stop crying," said Daniel coldly.
"I'm so scared, Daniel." she began begging. "Please, please don't do this. I don't want to die."
"Now, that!" he exclaimed, a wide smile panning across his face. "That is interesting. Why don't you want to die?
"I'm not ready," she said softly.
"Why not?" he asked with a faux curiousity. "Are you not happy with yourself?
Cars were streaks of metal refracting streaks of light in the rain as they flew passed Daniel, his foot keeping the accelerator wielded to the floorboard. They were hitting the highway, and the density of other vehicles was turning Katherine's fear into a heart-stopping panic as she grasped the locked car door handle and stared outside, hoping things would be alright.
"No.. not like this, Daniel," she begged. "Please.. Please stop, sweetie?"
"I'm not going to," he said."
"Why?" she asked, clutching his arm.
"Because we have to go somewhere," he said, flatly as if they both already knew the directions.
"Please, Daniel? Sweetheart?" she continued begging. "Please don't do this...?"
"You don't get it," he started. "I'm well aware of how unhappy I am. I've known for years how unhappy I am. I'll never be that space veterinarian zoologist soldier flying doctor lawyer that I wanted to be when I was young. I will never be the perfect man, and my adventure to accomplish these things has only made me sour and dishonest and manipulative, just like you. There is a place where none of this shit matters. There is a place that if I want to be happy, I will try to survive and that will be enough."
"What do you mean?" she asked. "Where are we going?"
"You should feel guilty, Katherine," he started. "You should feel ashamed. Ashamed of what you are, ashamed of what other people are, ashamed that you will never rise above that. I love you, I don't want to hurt you. I want to take you with me where none of that shit matters. I want to be your blackened rider, carrying and keeping you next to me as we ride on a wave of whiskey into a place where we don't have to feel like that. Where we can just live and shed all of this bullshit that makes us so dishonest. So hateful. So spiteful, vindictive and manipulative."
Daniel began veering into oncoming traffic through the median as Katherine continued squealing and crying, begging him to stop as she grabbed his arm and tried to pull it off of the wheel, yanking at his knee desparately to get his foot off of the gas.
"DANIEL, YOU'VE GOT TO STOP!" she yelled, crying. "YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST DANIEL, YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN."
"I'm going to fix things for us, Katherine," he said. "I love you."
"DANIEL THERE'S A CAR!" she yelled.
"Hold on sweetheart," he said softly, grabbing her hand. "Hold on really tight."
_____________________
When she came to, she could smell the scent of gas fumes pouring through the mauled wreckage and a sharp pain shooting through her arm.
"Oh.. my g-god, my arm," she said, trying to pull her hands from Daniel's fingers.
"I think my arm's broken, Daniel!," she continued frantically. "Let go of my hand, I smell gas and we need to get out!"
Daniel didn't let go. He didn't respond. He didn't move at all.
"Daniel?" she asked.
"...Danny?"
pariah
02-01-2009, 04:36 PM
Diane,
I’m sorry for contacting you this way. I know I should have talked to you after we had our falling out. I’m sorry I hounded you when we lived together. I did want the best for you, but I think I ended up sounding like a troll. I should have called you when I found out he died. I wanted to, but I was scared of what you would say to me. I didn’t really know what to think when I heard the news myself. We should have gone out for a drink when I got the call from his lawyer saying our father, Clarence Willis, had passed away.
It was a few weeks ago, when I got the call and flew out to the old farm house we grew up in. I wish I hadn’t taken the lawyer’s advice to collect any of his personal affects for “memories”. I didn’t want of them. However, I thought I could get some closure and maybe get a few bucks out of his junk laying around the house.
I was in the attic. It hadn’t seen attention in years, which made me wonder how long the lawyer waited to inform everyone of dad’s passing. Made me think he picked the place clean of anything of value. Everything in the room was hidden away in cardboard boxes or covered in a thick layer of dust. So, I spent the majority of my day splitting open boxes to find old sketchbooks, notebooks, and dozens of glass jars and vials. It was like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. He had jars of organs tucked away in different boxes. Others contained small vials filled amber liquid with tendrils of red or black pieces of flesh in them. I shudder to think the contents of these containers were attached something that was once alive.
Half of my day was spent looking through this stuff. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It felt like looking through a stranger’s life. I had no idea whose life I’d been digging through for the past day but it didn’t look like the neglectful alcoholic we’d grown up with together… Like it was a final “fuck you” from Dad. I still can’t fathom how we didn’t notice any of this. Was this after we left? Or was he drinking away some kind of insane obsession?
It wasn’t until late at night that I made it toward the back of the attic. It was the white powder on the ground forming a circle around the mirror what caught my attention. It was so odd that this was still here after who knows how long. This section of the attic had dozens of books in a language I didn’t understand or recognize. After closer inspection of the books, the covers just felt… strange. Like the book covers were made out of old leathered flesh stitched together. Seeing how old and how strange the books appeared, I thought they might be worth something… same with the mirror. I pulled the sheet off of the mirror to get a better look at the frame and the quality of the glass. The frame was painted a golden colored with runes or something etched into the wood. It barely looked like it was touched at all, but what bothered me was my own reflection staring back. It ebbed like it was made of water, like I could touch it and wet my fingertips. I felt so uneasy looking at myself, but I felt like I was cemented into place. That’s where I saw him, Diane. I saw Dad.
It felt like he was right beside me, but I after a quick glance to the side I still found myself alone. The image of Clarence Willis wasn’t the picture of life. It was a skeletal perversion of him. His smooth skin melted away to sickly ecru bone. His hair stayed the same bristled and thick with grime. There’s a whiskey bottle in his hand, but I doubt he can taste the burn of liquor down his throat. Even without his baby blues resting comfortably in his sockets, I know he could see me. I stare at the reflection of myself beside him. I can see the horror in my face. I can hear his voice calling out my name from a mouth with no tongue. The more I gape into the mirror the more I see myself becoming like him. In the mirror, my skin was fading away like his and I swear I could taste the dust of the attic through the open slits of my cheek.
I don’t remember screaming, but I’m sure I was. He kept repeating my name with a voice that shouldn’t exist through bone alone. His free hand reached out to me in the mirror image. I shoved the mirror back against the wall and ran. I heard a shriek of a man’s voice and the loud clatter of the antique crashing to the floor as I ran to the front door. I peeled out from the house and didn’t look back. The image still haunts me and has since gnawed at the back of my mind.
I’m so sorry, Diane. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to go there. If the lawyer calls you, hang up. He’s been calling me daily since I left the house, asking why I didn’t take anything or stay in the house. He keeps calling and leaving messages and calling again. He won’t leave me be. Do me a favor. Just one last favor. Change your phone number; shred your mail from this lawyer; move if you have to. There was something very wrong about that house and everything connected to it. There was something wrong with our father and it’s safe to say we probably knew nothing about him. I pray that I’m just crazy and I’m imaging all this nonsense. Imagining it in my head as I dream, I can’t shake the image I saw in the mirror. I don’t want this to be real. I hope it’s not real.
Megan
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