I: The Ultimate Hog-Tie

       “I believe in a population’s ability to speak beyond itself, as one

unified organism.  But who or what can understand this language?”

-the wisdom of the Slake.

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       Resting in the kitchen and decide to walk.  Run-ins and outs, but I

speculate that this one is worth the hunch.  There’s a spot in the

middle, junction to the stars.  No real plan, nor planning to just

walk, but a red sash-job jumps up from the street and offers an

interpretive point, pointing east.  And there’s the Slake.

       “Life is pretty long when you can’t see around corners”, he says.

       I feel an odd sense of familiarity, like I know this guy, so I jump

right in with a story that I would only tell a friend.  “So, I’ve been

having this problem.  I think that 40+45=95.  I don’t know why.  Can’t

figure it out.  But it’s becoming a real issue.”

       “Wax, wax, wax.  Would you pick a new star or a bucket?”

       I go, don’t answer.  Off to where it wasn’t quite so available, the

moment. Came and went and I just wasn’t as hungry.

       Get to a place I know so I go in, outside, toward the center.  Steady

heat-flow.  My head starts hurting when I enter the dark room.  Wet

cylinders everywhere, small puddle by the door with something moving.

Is this where they make spirits?, I think.  Act like I don’t see the

puddle, step right in it.  A hard, natural step.  The act is just for

me so I can convince myself that the suddenly thinking thing might be

inside out sometimes.

       A woman approaches.  She has knees, really big elbows, like knees.

Literally, two robbins you can’t hitchhike with a kneecap.  She’s

wearing a long, sleeveless dress.  It’s like a winter mix, almost

snowsuit material.  Takes my hand, puts a boundary around it.  Ennui.

Drags me through more puddles to see the picture.

       I’m standing alone again.  She’s gone. The door opens.  The Slake

again.  This guy wants to find me.

       “A think-brain puts on a coat and hat and finds itself standing in the

dark.”

       “It’s a dark room,” I reply, after quietly ripping off a corner of the

picture.

       “A dark pool of exceptions.”

       The guy keeps staring at me, waiting, I guess.  Waiting for some time.

 Probably time for some kind of timing.  My hand moves a little and I

knock over a jar of washers.  They tumble onto the floor in an oddly

regular rhythm.  Slake takes that as a cue and starts dancing.  Real weird dance, the kind of movement that is so unnatural it sends a

quicksilver of fear up the spine of the spectator.  Like instinct

guiding you to flight.  I hurry up, door-wise.  As I go, I hear him

chanting,

 “I will be somewhere else, I will be somewhere else.....”

       I know you will, I think as I uncross the threshold.

       Finally, back outside.  Walking.  I start trying to piece together the

evenings trajectory.  Stab down.  Downward stab: a.k.a. something you

can learn from a wizard.  Just thinking, moving, looking at people and

sky.  Block after block of down and out, hunger and thirst, quick words

and subtle ajax nonsense.  If a building is a seed, people would be

like minerals.

       Steven the Junk-bond stands between me and the public restroom.

Steven’s a real power-horse, used to be sheriff in his hometown but saw

the light and never looked back.  Nowadays, he can’t do much except be

contrary.  He’s trying to convince me that this night is in some way

unique.  This time it will show itself.  A roadway that won’t split at

the end.  Could be a real ending.  The kind of ending that no one

thought possible.  I start to think he is confusing the words ‘end’ and

‘answer’.  Either way, I’m skeptical.

       “You still a ghostbuster?,” I ask with a nickel’s worth of disdain in

my voice.

       “Fuck yes!  I’m seriously thinking about writing to Bobby Brown.  I

mean, I see all this business and I think, can’t be all wrong, right?

Like the fever of the blind, right?  The fever of the blind.”

       Right about now, I’d choose a bucket.

       “Look, I have to go.  Any paranormal activity in there I should be

aware of?”

       “Yeah.  White and shapely, probably not man-made.  Looking into it.”

       The moment he finishes, he starts sprinting into the forest.  I enter

the facility, go for a sit-down job.  Turns out someone beat me to the

punch.  Guy in the next stall starts talking.

       “What constitutes a forged mystery in a sea of actual mysteries?”

       It’s the Slake!!  I stand up before my time, burst out of the stall

and shout, “This place is freezing!  I can’t go.  I just can’t.”  For

the third time tonight, I flee the scene.

       Now I’m walking down-mind.  I start talking, hoping that no one hears

me, oddly gesticulating as I go, “When someone close to you dies, you

are forced to see yourself.  You see your own fear, the real stuff, the

stuff you hid under a carpet somewhere.  You think it hurts, but you

can’t tell.  Death as the path for all humankind is never more lucid

than when a loved-one dies.”

by Ed Rosenberg of the jerseyband

Photos By Sarah Sturges