Reflecting
back on that evening, I remember that the fog was unusual. It was
unusual in that I had the queerest notions as I drove through it.
The transparent milky strands formed in horizontal consistencies that resembled
a mass of gnarled fingers that seemed to reach through the glass and half
grab me. I suppose that if it weren't for my headlights I wouldn't
have noticed the macabre effects of the fog at all, because if I were to
suddenly shut them off it would be like closing your eyes in the darkness
of a large cave.
Then,
when you step outside of your vehicle on a night such as this one, no God
in heaven, nor masterful guru, nor artfully crafted words of advice from
your parents can ever prepare you for a pistol, freshly cocked in your
left ear, and pressed forcefully into your skull.
When she
had drawn her thumb back, the sobering rickety noise of the hammer caused
me to grip the crispy twenty-dollar bills tightly in my hand. And,
before I could even wonder what would happen next, the shiny metal door
of the ATM closed and revealed my assailants in the reflection.
A woman,
about six-feet tall, gripped the pistol tightly between her hands, one
finger caressing the trigger. I noticed immediately the unusual blond
pony-tail that extended like a miniature fountain directly in the center
of her head, and that her makeup was richly indulged.
That is
to say, her lips were painted pitch black, and the blush on her fat cheeks
were a vibrant rose. Standing next to her was a slightly shorter
man with a beard that was vacant in many places as if he weren't mature
enough to grow a fully proportioned one.
In a gruff
masculine voice, she snapped, "I'll take that!" And swiftly she swiped
the money from my hands.
"Now," she said, her voice changing
like melting butter, "let's see what we got here, Mickey. Making
a cocky transition away from my head, the gun soon jabbed me in the shoulder,
forcing me to turn.
Facing
them, I fully intended to die right there on the spot. And, seeing
the tightness in her black lips, and the unwavering attitude she displayed,
I knew she could do it too. The man next to her was as I assumed
him to be, not a man at all, but a lad not more than eighteen or twenty.
He had an unsteady balance in his posture, as if there was something inside
him that wanted to shake violently free. Something that was only
bound by a thin coating of sheer will to prevent it.
"Um--Juno--ARE
YA--ya--gonna shoot em?" he asked.
Juno,
staring at him from the dark corners of her eyes, said bluntly, "Mickey,
you are the biggest wussy I have ever met. I should make you kill
him; it would do you good!"
Mickey
winced outwardly, which produced a stream of expletives from Juno, "--It's
only blood, BOZO! Jesus-F---in Christ! If you think that I
am ever going to marry a half-baked, UN- buffed, no guts, no life, LOSER
LIKE YOU--You're dead wrong!"
Looking
down at his feet, Mickey created a void between their conversation before
Juno fired it up again.
"Mickey,"
she yelled, "check his pockets, you IDIOT!"
Racing
up to me upon her words, I flinched to his immediacy, and Juno screeched
as if leaving tread marks, "DON'T EVEN THINK OF TRYING ANYTHING, FUNNY!"
Wiggling
his fingers in the front pockets of my jeans, he produced the keys to my
Toyota. Then, looking at the ATM machine, Mickey grabbed my wallet
off the shelf and presented it to Juno as if he were offering it to a Goddess.
I prayed
for the headlights of a car to emerge.
"Hold
em for me," she said, jimmying the pistol in Mickey's hand, and going so
far as to hold his arms up and aim for him. "If he so much as farts,
SHOOT HIM!"
Searching
through the hide of my wallet she found a card denoting my membership in
APWU. "What's this, handsome," she cooed?
"It stands
for American Postal Workers Union," I answered a bit unsteadily.
As Juno
thought for a few seconds, I could almost hear the click in her head when
she smiled curtly, and said, "So--You're one of them disgruntled postal
employees, huh? My--my. I am impressed, Nathen," she added,
reading my name off the card.
I half
nodded.
"Well,
Mickey," she said. "It looks as if you can be replaced.
This here, Nathen, is a
PRO-fessional. He probably
knows more about killin then you ever will. Ain't that right,
NAY-then," she said, drawing out
my name.
I said
nothing.
"Oh, come
on Nate," Juno continued, "I'll bet you hate your boss--Don't you?
I've read all about you Postal Clerks in the paper."
I twitched...
"Ya,"
she said, as matter-of-fact, "I knew it."
Before
Juno's conversation could go any further, it seemed as if my prayers were
answered. In the distance, from a direction that was obscure, we
all heard the familiar whirrrrrr of a motor.
Juno's
head seemed as if to lay an egg then, and she quickly sprinted over to
Mickey and seized the thirty-eight special and pointed first at me, and
then to my Toyota. "You're driving," she retorted!
My hesitation
was great, but Juno wouldn't have it.
"Unless
you want to see, him, PUKE," she stated reverently, indicating Mickey from
a slight jerk of her chin, "FROM THE BLOOD that is going to SPILL from
your head, then I suggest you get in that truck and do as I say--Exactly-AS-I-SAY!"
Seconds
later, I was behind the wheel with Juno beside me and Mickey behind her
in the extended part of the cab. As the car's lights came into view,
and neared, Juno cocked the pistol as a warning.
When the
car had driven by, my hopes of escape left with it.
"DRIVE,"
Juno demanded!.
I did as I was told, my nerves
going through an imaginary meat grinder along the way. And precariously,
my mind began to play tricks on me. Without a doubt, and only by
my sure imagination and the cosmic totality of the situation, I knew that
Juno and Mickey were feeling the intricate fabric of fate begin to fray
and dismantle also. It was a sick and disturbing high. A high
that burst out from the seams of humanity and morality and infected us
all in different ways.
To me,
it was the shrill fear of the disillusion of destiny. All my dreams
and plans for a productive future were stolen from me in an instant.
The liquid that defied the laws of gravity and applied itself to physics
instead, crept up my throat and left a bitter taste in my mouth. And, an
ever increasing amount of anxiety was impacted to a central location in
my stomach. A location that wanted to burst from the seams and let
loose some screaming monster that would rip and shred my newly found enemies
to pieces.
For Mikey,
it was his fear of fear that kept his blood pumping to his extremities.
Constant jerks of his head to all adjoining roads and to the one behind
us left me to believe that insecurity was a major factor in his life.
Strangely, he only looked at Juno when she was looking elsewhere.
And for
Juno, it was one thing and one thing alone that kept her entire basis for
life in check.
POWER!
Her demand
for precision as she directed me to turn upon this road, or, "Slow it down,"
with carefully intoned words, made me feel that she was experienced in
giving orders. Her movements were equally entrenched with a sleek
attitude that she played to win. When she desired a particular directional
view, she did it out of the corner of her eyes.
It wasn't
long before we were out of town completely and upon a narrow twisting highway
where massive cliffs made their descent into the sea.
"So tell
me, Nathen," Juno asked suddenly, "what's it like to live your life by
licking stamps?" The statement was as blunt as the edge of a hammer.
Again,
I said nothing. Instead, I smoothed out the kinks in my legs that
formed with her words.
"Come
on, Nate," she continued smugly, "Tell Juno what's it like to go POSTAL."
Still
hearing nothing from my lips, Juno was determined to stir something up.
It were as if she had some erroneous notion that I was as demented as she,
and she was going to prove it.
"I'll
bet," Juno said brashly, and directing her remarks to both me and Mickey,
"That if your Postmaster were here right now, and you had this here gun,"
she said, sliding the barrel to the ceiling of the cab, "that you wouldn't
hesitate to bring it right up to his puny little head and," she paused
long enough to bring the barrel slowly downward to her left ear, "pull
the trigger."
The silence
that followed, brought only seconds later, the soft but powerful, "POW!"
from her black lips.
And when
what seemed a split shift in time, she added quickly, "Sort of like this--"
Then she swung her arm back with the pistol and shot Mickey in the forehead.
From that
explosion, inter-twined with what I saw in the rear view mirror, created
an indentation in my mind that would never go away! Mickey's brains
splattered on the back window like chunks of chili, no empty spaces of
clear glass. Only the blood shining transparently red. And,
the friction that was created when his limp body slid downward to the floorboards
was superfluous to the million horrendous thoughts of my own demise.
"Oh, dear
God," I croaked, and began to feel intense convulsions vent from the very
depths of my soul. The aches in my side told me to ask, "Why--Why?"
After
a depressingly long silence, Juno's only reply was, "I told him he could
be replaced."
My fear
began to escalate after her words faded into the realization that I knew
what was next... It would be my turn next! And this fear grew
and grew! So much so, that little of nothing was of value to me.
It was as if my essence departed my body and left the flesh of what was
left of me to decide the course I would take. So I let the flesh
take over, and my foot hit the accelerator.
God, forgive
me, was all I could think when my Toyota soon reached speeds of over sixty-miles-per-hour.
"STOP
IT," Juno demanded, "GOD DAMMIT, slow DOWN!"
But I
didn't care anymore. I went even faster, and the rubber from the
tires outside screamed out warnings to what-ever would hear it. Even
when Juno thrust the pistol to my head, I did nothing to curb the speed.
Then,
when I saw the massive spruce tree looming a short distance ahead, with
the precision that Juno would have expected, I aimed and hit the trunk
with a full force head-on collision. When it was done, the motor
was split in two, and the front of the hood was through the window shield
and bent over the dash.
Still,
we were both alive. Bloody, but alive....
And Juno,
who precariously landed atop me, still held the gun in her bright crimson
fingers. Her equally enamored teeth were exposed as she, after staring
for what seemed like hours, slowly spoke in-between bazaar half-coughing
half-chuckling noises. "Hey, Nate--I want you to know--that there
is a little bit of me in everyone."
Although
my body ached deliriously from the amount of crushed and broken bones all
over my body, and the fact that Juno's breath reeked like rotting meat,
I still managed to muster most defiantly, "There is nothing inside of you
that will ever be in me!"
Juno stared
into my swollen eyes for a long time. Searching...
Then as
if she found what she was searching for, she smiled and stated bluntly,
"Oh but there is, Nate, there is!" Then she lay her head on
my chest and said sadly, "Think of it this way--" and as she spoke
she used her own hand and fingers to place the gun in my right hand and
the barrel into her mouth, to where my view was unobstructed. "--Think
of me as your boss."
Then,
Juno made my finger pull the trigger...
GOLDEN HANDCUFFS
Evil womb, what sticky seeds,
Planting them indiscriminately.
Watch them grow, until they fester,
What's it matter,
When you're the master.
Rose colored glasses,
words dipped in molasses,
unsheared sheep,
gossip too cheap,
who cares who weeps...
It's the sharp sickle that reaps!
Intricate grape vine,
seniority pipeline,
intimidation,
misinformation,
spy vs spy...
why she swallowed that fly, only I know why!
Long brown noses,
excreting morals,
swallowing pride...
If you would like to make comments about my story,
or poem, please e-mail me at.....
... 
e-mail>>>>>>> [email protected]
Back
to home page
.
Mug
shot of Triton
