14.

"My job was created by an enormous government owned anomaly locating machine. I am not sure who created the machine."

When I pull it out I can feel the magnetic pulse beneath the barb scarred leather. I never touch them, the seven hard plastic cards, each with an invisible aura of strings and numbers slurring the air around them; though they reach their branched stickly fingers sliding up my veins. Their pulse is louder than mine.

"What kind of anomalies?"

"Every kind."

13.

"Do you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time?"
"No. Why?"
"That's our turn up there."
"Does it have to do with that girl you keep hidden in your wallet?"
"What girl?"
"You left it on the seat when at the station. She was pushed up in a hollow behind your cards."
"Strange. She must belong to someone else. The wallet is second hand."
"Sure"

12.

It was bright and quiet in the diner; sun glaring through large windows, amplifying the smell of eggs and coffee. There were soft conversations and a low motors from the highway outside. The stranger was sitting at the bar dressed in a gray suit and black tie, a dark fedora resting on the seat next to him. He was smoking and pushing his black hair off his forehead.

The lady was in a blue and white uniform, standing behind the shiny bar and glowing cakes and muffins. Her curly red hair was pulled back with a pink band.
"Goodmorning..." he started.
"Kelly." She pointed at a name tag.
"Morning Kelly."
"Coffee?"
"Sure," he smiled and tapped his cigarette while she grabbed him a mug.
"Cream? Sugar?"
"No."
"Anything else?"
"Actually I'm supposed to meet a Beatrix Oswald... You know her?"
"The writer? Know of her. She doesn't come here."
He sipped his coffee. "She knows I'm meeting her if thats what your thinking." he pushed his hair back again, "Do I look like like a weirdo?"
She shrugged. Her eyes tagged the far corner of the diner, and then back to him. "Enjoy your coffee." and she walked into the kitchen, glancing once over her shoulder.

And that must be her. In a corner booth, late-twenties, short black hair messed, wide blue eyes behind small wire rimmed spectacles, and knees resting on the table edge. In front of her were plates of bacon, eggs and toast, two steaming cups of coffee, and what seemed to be the remnants of a few muffins. She was hunched over scribbling in a hidden notebook. The way she squished her face around while thinking made her look angry.

11.

Seven hours later, past midnight, the last clench passed and the cool world crept back into her bubble vision, evaporating the thick layers of splashed sweat. Above it all was the determined wail between her knees. She tensed her aching stomach muscles and dug one wrist into the course tan carpet and used the other to push hair from her face as she sat up to peer down.

In the moonlight the purple bundle screamed and lightly kicked, but what amazed Ophelia Oswald most, what pulled her stomach into tight knots and pulled from her tired lungs a loud sobbing laugh, was the little girls eyes; they were wide open and shimmering blue, brighter than the moon in the desert sky. She wrapped the girl in her jacket from the front seat, and stroked her cheeks until she stopped crying.

They slept together the rest of the night, curled up in the bucket seats.

In the morning before turning the car in a wide circle to head home, Ophelia hopped out to pee on the side of the highway. She squatted down in the chilly damp morning, with a light breeze pushing her dress and orange clouds slicing behind her. She looked down at the ground for the first time. Rolled into the ditch near the road were four pale naked bodies, crusted with dust, blood and bullet holes.

10.

Pulled apart,and cold separated into distinct apartments peering deep focusing beyond the superficial self provided consoles of connections to touch and feel and laughter and art and knowledge which may be contained in the termite cave, wrapped boxed up, shoved over ikea storage particle boards, but not shiny or glowing or high definition.

9.

Its puppet jaw drops, unhinged, revealing glimmering pink folds, eyes rolled back in pleasure, and before she can blink the quiet background roar of the forest stops. Concentric muscles grasp and squeeze her slipping her like a bar of soap down palpitating slopes and puckered tubes.

She comes to a rest between thick folds of membrane, pressing like cold wet blankets - her neck ticked sideways and aching against her shoulder. The place begins to glow dim orange as her eyes adjust, the dim blurred evidence of an unreachable outside. her nose stings and burns, the chill of autumn penetrates scales and plasma, snatching her marrow warmth. Curled, nude and pressed to live cold cells which suck at her particles, pulling up and away through minuscule honking highways, she shivers. Sour bits creep into to the corners of her mouth. She is pulled apart in molecules.

8.

THe sky is orange and dark beyond the high parking lot sentries. The tall poles rigid and seem shorter in the night. Few cars push up the lot, just the far ones near the all night grocery. but all the lot bulbs hum and we pull a cart from the line, red plastic opaque and cleaner shower by incandescent orange. Colors are supposed to dim at night, the iris tightens and sends the beam straight to the back rods, but at night really colors seem to crunch and smolder, oranges and reds eat deep into the grays and pulling blacks.
You hop into the cart, rocking, long red jacket spilling over the edges, and crouch down, gripping the sides. You pull down invisible pilot goggles tighten a helmet strap and lean on the throttle.

7.

A knock kicked my lids open and pushed my stomach down for a second.
"You in there?"
"Yeah."
"The door is locked."
"My digestion is weird."
"We could look into some of those Vaucanson tracts."
"Sure."
"It's lunch." she stops for a moment, "I really don't want to go back."
"You want me to cover you?"
"Yeah. Just half a shift. You should probably start getting ready, I leave my suit out here."
"You want my spare?"
"No. I'll lounge. Give me a hug before you leave."

6.

Beatrix Oswald was born in the desert in the back seat of an old blue Volvo station wagon. It was midday, sunny, and stringy long clouds wiped across the sky. The yellow Nevada dust was spotted to the horizon with towering sequoias and squat prickly bushes. Her mother, Ophelia Oswald, had been driving home, when her insides twisted around and shocked the blood out of her toes. She slammed on the breaks and waited for the tightening twist to pass. She turned the car, shifting dust, and meditated, thinking only about shifting gears, the hot leather seats and cold dry conditioned air on her knuckles, not the accumulating drum of blood behind her eyes and the heat and twisting in her stomach. There was an impatient kick inside.

A few minutes later she stopped again, crawled into the back and lay down, sweating and breathing fast. She pulled off her underpants, positioned an old jacket under her head and waited, breathing.

5.

The ceiling above my bed is dull white. It could be red or purple, brilliant and exciting. I can hear the flapping rain on the roof and behind the curtains, ambient gray moisture weighing my arms and eyelids. The covers a warm shelter, a beaver hut, sticks and mud, I ducked down below and try to wake up a second time in the dark warm dusty space.

Half an hour passes and I stop trying. This is it. A shower, shave, toothpaste, toilet paper sucking on cuts, everything some shade of white.

4.

It never crossed my mind that i would see her again, she turned to foam and floated to a different part of my brain, filed away for later while active neurons busied themselves tapping about the gray lumps in my briefcase. A salesman can't be picky.

The job came from a newspaper ad which read 'sales person needed, not squeamish, fast learner.'

Normally I keep afloat without extra day-job fluff, keeps the sky open, but the sinking dry heat shriveled crops turned to dust around me, and a guy can't just chew rocks.

The add was in the paper, the only one i liked but I circled it in red anyway. I bought the pen.

3.

Next I saw her trudging through crumbling red-brick buildings patched with cinder blocks and ply-wood in deep Charm city. The bubble following her was full of dark smoke from the cigarette in her lips and her heel's tangy cracking on the side walk. Dark straight hair, jeans, polynesian sort of face, and black smart eyes, though she never glanced in my direction. Anyone who smoked today wasn't after the nicotine, not that I buy Fruedian death drive crap, but some people seem to thrive on the constant remind of their mortality, or maybe just the adrenaline push that comes. She smiled as she pulled the warm particles down, the bubbling thick of tar and cancer, and a short grumbling wheeze of breath, warm breath in my face and tugging my lips as she passed.

That was this morning. I think she had a guy with her, I don't remember. I split quick, not much a town-dweller, makes me feel like a tunneling insect- chewing through dim lit tunnels all important like ever single other shining black-backed slicker down there.

2.

I was in Africa when some guy pushed that knife through her ribs. Africa. I'm not a traveler though, in fact this was the first trip out of the states in my life, or since the war anyway, and I have been around a long time. Africa, on safari, in the bush, as they say. Or is that australia? I was there though, the place was a shack and racket, cots, single sheets, dirt on it all. They said we would each get a deer, there were four of us, me and three other john-toots I had never met before, but from around here they said. Strange they said to ship deer here for us to shoot, but a ticket was a small price for that kind nostalgic fix, deer hunting, like growing up when our fathers slapped our backs, laughed and passed the rifle, gave us a cigarette, a sip of whiskey, and pushed our nose towards the buck with a thick stiff finger.
There.
Quiet.
Aim.
Now.
And the giant buck, molting, gray, towering pillar of stiffened muscles, spat his brains out behind him and liquefied, twisting into a settled pile on the leaves. The other guys were great, I like them a lot though we never got a deer from that sunburned heap. A short white man drove us gunning it on dusty road pausing only to check for tracker blips on his console. "Somewhere around here." He said a couple times pointing at a dry prickly bushes, from which we would roll out a leathery carcass or a foot of dung, tracker in tact.

They weren't build to survive the desert, no water-humps, no spines or teeth, just cute eyes and longs legs that don't work overheated and dry. The dripping hyenas cackled in the night circling the beached fish gasping terrified "oh's," eyes bulging.

1.

I didn't kill the dirty hayseed. A shame though. I liked her. She had true eyes you get from bumping around too long.

She stomped in here the middle of the night, cramping my trance, her car in a ditch, rasping out steam, crumpled nose and sagging old eyes. Alone, so I guess she snatched the car someplace, and no one would miss a flappy-rust like that. She was droopy herself, red hair heavy and wet. She was a stick, crooked knobs, strange angles, all elbows and knuckles, bright green eyes, crusty bark skin, asking about a place to clock out until she could get a ride. Her owl eyes and sideways lips said steal everything in sight. I though about shoving her off, but gave her the barn, on the condition I could lock her in, more for my mind, enough rat holes in there a bull could stroll through.

While she fluffed her feathers in the barn I checked the car, empty, Washington plates, and if she pulled it down from there I was impressed, it was beat down, out of gas and punched into the ditch, crushed motor mounts, oil dumping down, mixing with brown leaf sludge and discarded sucked-up needles. The bumper stood in the road, crooked up on edge, creeping with the wind.

Local hooligans, camped in the woods at night, pumping junk into their veins, not much hot around here, just whatever they could snag from the local pharmacies; amphetamines and like. I couldn't tell if the ditch needles were hers or theirs.

In the morning she was gone.



A rhinoceros could have easier picked up a caterpillar.