1. Mister This was clearly that: a mister, and he was in the grain aisle, but he was also a woman who was a man. A feminine flipped-under hairdo sat above quarter-sized gold button earrings the tackiest. Bright green eye shadow all the way up to the eyebrows. Cheeks like sunburn. A long velvet dress of yellow green. And yet quite a man. But was it a woman who was a man who was a woman, or a man who is a woman who is a man?
I at the time was wandering the western hemisphere at a great speed, through space and time, searching for, what seemed to be, exactly This, this Mister This.
I said into her ear, "Human ..." and she turned her face to me, but saw nothing. She smelled something. She searched for a physical being but found none. She cupped her ear and pushed vigorously, as if to shake or provoke the hallucination to repeat. She carried on through the aisle, and down another while I sat above the highest rafters and furthermost away. I roped her energy and was tied like a kite to her third vertibrae, and hung from her like a kite ascending quickly into the highest atmosphere, and penetrating ozone and looking down onto the earth, and began descending, descending at great speed, as a meteorite.
The shim was standing before her mirror, and began to remove her clothing, first the wig and earrings, and unzipping her dress, and removing her padded brazziere ...
No I am not the flying woman, I am the one who met her, before her mirror, as she removed her clothing to reveal herself a man. (To my readers -- let me begin by clarifying -- I am not a human entity, and I am not a visible entity in the physical realm. I am able to communicate with human beings using telepathy. I can use human proxies to transcribe communications in writing, which is how this piece was composed. The author of this piece is a human proxy that I am communicating through.) It was then that I addressed her once more that evening, saying, "Human ..." and she froze in terror before the mirror, locking eyes with herself. "Who is it?" her voice was that of a man's. "Don't be afraid," I said, "Human ..." Her eyes dilated, "Undefinable, unpredictable, human ... Do you realize that you are human? You can shapeshift, you are immortal, there is nothing to understand or achieve!"
And she simply replied, "Come out!" and I said to her, "Why would I be visible? I needn't breathe therefore I have no breathing organs. I needn't see, I am all things! There is nothing to understand or achieve! Try to make yourself smaller you'll get bigger, try to catch a disease it will avoid you!"
"Then I should set out to catch a disease!" said the shim.
"No, because then you will catch it," with pity I corrected the sad mortal.
He, she, began to muddle her temple with her thumb, and proceeded to frown hard and sharp, and quiver her stubbled chin, and tossed the wig defeatedly against her mirror reflection, and continued to undress, to unzip the remainder of her velvet dress and step out of her heels, and suddenly weeping from the eyes when a large bulge at the crotch of her pantihose was revealed to herself, and suddenly weeping from the eyes and spitting from the mouth, "I do not wish to live this life any longer!"
I reminded him, "but you are a man of great status ... would you disregard thirty years of work simply to be rid of your body?"
"This is the wrong body! I will have it no longer!!"
"But your art ..."
"It is not of me. I - I am a phony, a plagiarist, a theif!"
"Well then, all's you need to do is realize that you're already long dead ..."
"Yes go on ..."
"You've been dead for many years now, you've been living your mind's final thoughts, a collapsing dream ... and if you could just realize ... you're imprisoned by a dying brain in a finished life."
He, the shim, laid down exhausted in his bed cot.

2. "Reincarnation"
He woke in a foreign-familiar place lying horizontal from a flapping blue curtain being sucked and blown into and from the window. When he had gained enough consciousness to process his surroundings, his entire life came rushing back into the front of his mind. A stream of water was falling heavily from the roof gutter and smacking the pavement just outside the window. Faint thunder in the distance; the soft howl of a train. The air was cold and he was naked beneath three fleece blankets. He removed his hands from the warmth between his legs and moved them along his chests, and began groping his full, soft breasts. "Yes, I suppose I always have been a lady," he spoke aloud in a woman's voice. In his head he was grasping for the fleeting memories of last night's dream of flying, flying above Kessing park, high above the trees, round the perimeter of the foliage just between neighborhoods.
The shim stood up stiffly and turned to the mirror. He confronted his reflection: a brightly illuminating white form of flesh stood there in the sunlight, and he spoke, "You hideous beast!" He spoke to his female features, "I wish I were a man!"
"But you are a man." I said, and he didn't flinch. "You wished to be a woman, remember?" He was unaffected! Conditioned in this life to foreign voice-thoughts.
He, the shim, moved to the hallway and exclaimed to no one, "Oh Ernest!" as though he were Judy Garland, and clasped his hands against his cheek, startled by the high feminine pitch of his voice. He sighed, "Oh what a grand occasion in the mirror just now ... I met myself formally! Though, I do wish to forget my real self ... with only a table and chair ... so they say." He ran a bristle brush against his shoulder-length deep-brown hair, "If this world is what I think it is, I wish to be out of this world!"
And the radio rambled, "And I can gamble for love, just as long as I lived ... If you haven't gambled, for love in the moonlight, then you haven't gambled, at all ... "

At the cafe he met Robert for coffee and paid with quarters and dimes and nickles. "Okay," said the shim, "as soon as the internet reaches the last of mankind, they will be able to draw definite conclusions about entire populations and factions of people ... are you ready for that?"
"Angloid is a starter of cults," replied Robert, "cults of belief, at their most semenal level."
Amused, Angloid the shim opened a wooden briefcase that sat beneath the table. "Here is what I have so generously deemed my non-skill stupid-painting." He indicated a section of canvas, "it has 180 pieces of flesh with vibrating molecules reaching."
Robert took the small canvas in his hands delicately and laid his eyes upon the work. "Maybe this human being is worth something after all," he spoke as he examined the piece against the light.
Angloid removed the painting from his hands, "Snap out of it you are behaving as an ant! Fix it!" Angloid demanded.
"But but, I am having an orgasm of the brain," said Robert of the canvas.
Angloid reached back into his briefcase, presenting now the work of his lifetime, his voice strung high from years of reaching into other galaxies for the sake of this one artwork, "Now this is the work of my lifetime!" said Angloid, revealing an unremarkable abstract black shape on white canvas.
Robert refrained from acknowledging the piece. "Is that a man or a woman inside your head, Angloid?" he spoke now from behind a shield of newspaper, "And are you only pretending to be a woman?"
Angloid sighed dejectedly, "Yes, an uncomfortable middle gender seems to follow me through many lifetimes. It is a curse for petty crimes I've committed in previous lives."
"Crimes of what?"
"Something tells me, perhaps longing for a change of genitals."

3.
The publisher leaned over the draft and gestured with the back of his right hand, indicating the script before him -- he who can think only of a child's suicide in the snow (kids are so fragile anymore), a past life, and can conjure no relevant information for the subject before him, a mound of uninteresting images yet to be published in the October edition of Arts of Tomorrow, and he pulled back the cover letter and laid down to stamp the word APPROVAL. The balding editor, who sat before him, took great pity on his client.
------------------+
They was at the bar and Angloid's shrill female voice reverberated from every window and wall, and every person in the room sat hunched over having their ears violated. "You see why she has been iconocized: not strictly for her beauty, but for her early termination! Death before the sagging flesh of womanhood!"
A young beautiful female in a floral sleeveless dress replied, "Everyone is mad at beautiful people for indulging in it."
Angloid leaned forward and pointed limply at the young woman, "Hey, ya wanna talk scandal? Well ya ever punched a guy in the eye? Well I did last night and BOY what a right of passage."
"He hit you?" the shocked woman inhaled.
"No I hit him, I punched em in the eye, then he caught my foot on the stairs and tried to crush my head with his hands, and he spit in my face!"
"Why didn't you call the police?!" the young woman was frightened for Angloid the shim.
"Aw he's just a little guy, I could have kicked him down the stairs and broke his neck if I wanted to, but I didn't want to hurt him." He paused, "I'd rather take pain than inflict it."
"You're gonna get yourself killed ... " said the girl, and turned completely around on her barstool to address the man beside her, to initiate a new conversation.
Angloid tapped her on the back, and she turned around. "See, all's I'm tryin to do is talk to you as equals," said the shim, "All I'm sayin is, if a person deals me an insult, I'll deal one back. If they challenge me physically, I'll deal what's been asked of me. Don't take it personal."
And the girl spoke with finality, "you're just like a man." and turned back around to speak again to the gentleman beside her.
"Just think of it as a mirror," Angloid attempted to continue the conversation but received no further attention. "Hey barkeep," said the girl in the floral dress, "I wish this cat would leave me alone," said the girl, indicating Angloid, who sat unaware over a whiskey, neat.
The bearded, stiff, authoritarian barkeeper turned right around and met eyes with Angloid. "You think you're a Zupermench in a pisshole like this. You're just like everyone else ... worse in fact."
Angloid pulled two dollars from the lining of his men's sportjacket, laid them down in a puddle of warm beer, "Add this to your tip! Thank you and good night!"
"Goodnight Angloid," came crusty from the gullethole of an old man who sat in a dark, damp, piss-scented corner of the bar.

Angloid sang to himself so alert in the dark of the city night, "Sad sorry song ... I know what I done wrong ... Sad sorry song ..."
And he approached the apartment building of his lover, who upon opening the front door lit up like headlights and immediately subdued his raw desire, retreated into the dark of 2:18 am and pulled the door open invitingly, as a chamberservant.
Enter apartment 4, a masculine heap of objects and glowing objects, a fishtank of toads serving as the main light source.
"Oh Ernest!" said Angloid quite femininely. Ernest held in his hand a piece of folded paper, "Precious and Warm, I wrote this about you." He unfolded the letter and began to recite what was written, "I'd rather with you bed than wed ..." his eyes shot up from the paper in realization shock, "Then only did I mean -- 'who poisoned my water?' and that is what it said." he indicated the paper, pointing, and said off to the side, "just imagine living this text for the purpose of retelling --"
"Go on now," Angloid encouraged.
Ernest continued, "I heard the news-music on the voice-radio, 'the country needs your help!' the voice-radio said. It drinks unknown liquid from a blood red cup --"
"What drinks the liquid?" Angloid interjected.
Ernest looked him dead in the eyes, "It is a mystery figure from the corner of mine eye. It listens to droning radio advertisements and writhes in pleasure." he looked back down at the paper in his hands, "and then began Frank Sinatra on the radio ... "
Angloid slurred now, "Wanna give me an example of this Frank Sinatra scenerio?"
Ernest frustratedly admitted, "I cannot conjure even one, I wasn't there." and he folded the poem and stuffed it back into his satchel.
---------------+
Angloid pulled gently closed the front door, locked both locks, and jimmied a chair under the doorknob, in case little Elmo in room 301 should continue his P.C.P. rage.
He threw down his men's sport jacket and stood there scratching his head. The clock read 3:34 am. "What has transpired this night?" he spoke, I suppose, to me, in the pitch dark of the bedroom.
He flipped the light switch and immediately began undressing before the mirror. Removed shirt, ran his hands over his revealed flesh. Over his breasts, squeezing, as if to disappear them. Removed his pants, underwear, over the foot and kicked to the closet, and ran his thumbs upward his back to remove his brazierre. He analyzed his nudity from all angles and slapped his bitch hips with disdain, and again held up his breasts as if to make them false, a hallucination, a foreign limb.
"But you were a man, don't you remember?" I finally spoke, and received no reaction.

4.
Angloid incurred five separate injuries that night, but remained blameful of the external world. On one substance or another at any given time. Rents an apartment in the inner city ... rather, the political capitol of the state, o/'up on capitol hill o/' as they sing. It's hard not to feel oversexed in the city. There are janitorial closet lovers!
He woke the next day, with his brain heavily affected by last night's substances, so much that he stood straight up out of bed, tied his shoes which were still on his feet, and leaves with his green satchel from building 1403 Adams St. And he came by Helmud the frog, who said "Angloid! What are you thinking about?"
Angloid cringed in the sunlight, "Brain cannot compute. But! I have figured a few good gender pronouns ..."
"I like your stripes," observed Helmud.
"Shou, shim, shis, shem, shep --"
"What does it mean?"
"Gender pronouns. 'Jasper was neither he nor she -- fe was fim.'" He continued with examples, "'Fim, over there!'" He indicated an imaginary shim in the distance. "'The keys are fis. Fe and fis wife are very nice people. And fe is stubborn, I despise fim.'"
Helmud nodded with understanding. "It was good seeing you Angloid -- you know where I am if you need anything," he said, and departed with a stalk of corn.

Angloid approached a grand cathedral and ascended the steps toward the heavy double-door entrance. A man spied the shim from his apartment window and masturbated to his gender confusion.
Angloid kneeled before a pew in the tabernacle and began to pray, "I, poor miserable Mr. Fatbash, on this 274th day of this year, in the month of September, in the year of 2009, on the 4500 block of East Colfax avenue, upon exiting the oriental gift shop above The Bank Bar and Grill, -- it is on this day that I have fallen weak and have been reduced to consult the God of my childhood, the God of the Baptist. It is insignificant except that I must remember, in the future, when I am arrogant in my atheism.
"Quite by accident I -- I mean, either that or fate -- I have come to cross a witch. In my recent nightmares I have crossed her good, and she casts a hex on me. Sometimes in my lucid state she controls my words and actions. I can hear her obnoxious he-laughter quite the boy when -- "
"It is not a witch," I replied, "It is me."
Angloid stopped whispering prayer then, finalized his prayer with a nod, and stood up to wipe the dust from his knees.

The night, in the night, he ran to the cemetery, and the faces upon the trees were angry, until he gazed femininely and with understanding into their eyes, and they were moved to frown and turn away, almost with shame at their anger. A shadow in the tree was moving; it had a purple glowing nucleus. It became a face that hovered in front of him as he ran round the parimeter of the courtyard, and it followed him into the deep shadows of the trees, where it appeared most pronouncably, and was even clearer than any headstone or nearby thing. He dilated his eyes to see beyond it, and it disappeared. All around the courtyard and in the trees were fluid shadows with purple orbs. The trees formed the number 42. He heard heavy footsteps directly behind him, as if they were on his own heels, but they did not match the rhythm of his footfall. He stopped to observe a branch which framed a orange glowing sphere at the top of a light post. "This is no accident!" he cried at the night, "Who has made this art?" He speculated, "If it were a visible entity, it would appear to me in human form ... no ..."
"No, I do not need oxygen. I do not eat. What is there to view?" I replied.
"Then I cannot perceive you!" was the first reply I ever received from Angloid. He itched his louse-ridden scalp and began running startled by realization through the grass. There came again heavy footsteps on his heels, and he denied his fear, and dismissed it enough to momentarily forget, and there came a voice, "Aren't you curious whose footsteps follow?"
And there was no reply.

5. P.B. Max
Angloid woke to a voice booming from the foyer, saying, "I already am, was, is, and how-is!"
"Who is it?" he said with crumbly voice, lifting his head from the pillow. "P.B? Is that you there?"
"It's P.B!" said the voice, the kind that permeates a room and moves through walls, "not a young-boy prodigy, it is a boy and a woman both! Who is this? It is not a young boy prodigy," his voice boomed, shaking metal and possessing outsiders at the molecular level. As though from inside of a great cave, out came the voice, it was a man of the streets, a man-dog, somebody's attack dog, a slobbering two-toothed barking man!
"Didn't I lock my door?" Angloid remained stiff beneath the blanket in his bed, "Don't come in, don't come in! Let me get dressed," he said, and waited for confirmation of his instructions. When P.B. Max agreed, Angloid sat up with blanket still cloaked over, latched his brazierre which he picked up with his big toe from the floor, and stretched himself toward the closet door, and yanked the robe which hung from the knob. When Angloid came into the hallway to meet his houseguest, P.B. stated, "I know I am a sinner because everything I touch is filthy!" he indicated a hand-print on the wall, as a self-righteous stoner.
Angloid cried out, "All my visitors are freaks! That's right nobody with pleated pants may enter the premises," and said off to the side, "they have never enjoyed their stay anyhow. And whenever I get to feelin like myself, they start to display antisocial behaviors..."

Angloid and P.B. was walkin down Colfax carrying a milk jug each. Now, this particular body, called Angloidandra Fatbash, exists in a physical location on the planet of Earth, and moves constantly back and forth between two points on a map: "A" being the point which reaches deep into the cityscape -- into the nucleus of city, at 25th and Lawrence -- and "B" being 3 miles from that, at the edge of Kessing park. A strict routine of moving back and forth between two points twice daily, back and forth, wove a territory of female musk that repelled most other beings from her path. "The freaks are few," said Angloid, "but the freaks flock to me!"
In truth, the significance of Angloid's existence, throughout his lifetime and for the remainder of world history, would have affected barely two generations of family and acquaintences, and in total only a dozen people, whose memories of him were never passed down to younger generations. He was a fleeting idea, there with P.B. at Smiley's Laundromat.
"See you've had your fun, but the jig is almost up, then it's Judgement Day and what have you done?" proclaimed P.B. max.
"But even that is delusional of you to say," said Angloid. "If I can speak from my conscience, I can tell you that this body hates itself, and I must constantly reassure the poor animal." He reached into his green satchel and withdrew an envelope with a handwritten address, "Angloidandra Fatbash, 1403 Adams St. Denver CO." He jimmied his finger in a space between the paper and tore it open. It read as follows:
"Angloid -- I can provide leverage for a person of intelligence like yourself -- a person with your degree of mental ingenuity is incapable of self-marketing. Contact me -- C.C. Jefferson --(760) 674 - 6752"
Angloid grinned to face P.B. Max, "See, there is a grand scheme scenerio in place for the soul within this vessel!"
"Yeah! To forget itself!" cried P.B. Max with spittle.
"But it is so self-involved beyond reasoning. Thrives on consuming. Fixed on sensations."

Angloid by himself again that day entered the cathedral, this time to approach St. Baby Saint, and without salutation St. Baby said, "Aghast! What kind of child were you? If you plotted blockman against blockman, so it will be in your own life! Kneel," he commanded of Angloid, "close your eyes," he said, and Angloid did --
When he opened them again, in the small parking lot between two apartment buildings, in the mouth of the alleyway, next to a dumpster, St. Baby sez, "You got a spiritual problem down inside."

6.
"Your little whispers will not save you, Angloidandra," emitted St. Baby from a red orb, "but look before you at the pink flamingo in the front yard garden, look around beyond the city streets where beautiful people walk, think now of your lover -- isn't this what you wanted, O molder of reality?"
"I just thought there would be more sex," confessed the she-thing, Angloid, "Is it okay to be tired? Who ain't tired. It's the end of a shit year and freezing as tits and everybody's just about sick of it. Sick of seven AM hardly a minute to hisself, never a day, and when he does he sleeps. So nobody's shackin up without trouble. Some people -- not me but some people -- they got the herp, some can't perform, you-know. Nobody can meet each other. Nobody wants to. Some have such violent sneezing. I'm concerned. I hear it's disturbing out there -- out there -- I want to be disturbed."
And St. Baby Saint was either invisible or had long gone by then.

The shim made his way to the capitol building for the anti-protest. On a megaphone someone was speaking, "THE HUMAN SPECIE IS MEANT TO DISSOLVE IN THE OCEAN, ONLY TO EMERGE AGAIN AS A SUPERIOR BEING, A NEW SPECIE! IN THE PETRI DISH THAT IS EARTH! LET THE END BEGIN! I AM HAPPY OF IT!" and the crowd murmurred in contemplation.
A woman next to the shim said this, "...he sneaks into my apartment, farts in my drawers, and leaves ..."
A cat person next to the shim elbowed him, and said, "You could've told George Washington Carver nobody was gonna eat peanut butter, and people like us don't write books, so that's why I'm tellin you to read this," and the cat handed a thick dog-eared book with the title Let's End Humanity Together, All Together That Is, and continued, "To reach a certain level of cognisance one must be neither male nor female, equally both or none nothing. What a freak right, cos people need to label. It's a defense mechanism I don't blame them, I sympathize to a degree, they are stupid after all, like a pig is stupid. I am not above such notions, I am an animal too ... my soul sometimes turns off ice cold. And this is my human side talking, not my cat side. Some are afraid of the cat culture, some are afraid of the robot culture, but it's really a step towards heaven we're building a ladder. Now, what religion is that? Is it Scientology? Well consider me a scientologist. They are investing in their robot vessels with which to carry their souls. Or is that the devil talkin ... " she covered her mouth, "To be between religions is claustrophobic, every aspec' of your being is owned to one side of another. Let me if I may, do you know anything of pain? Can you feel it at all? Well I suppose you're too busy taking notes to respond. This might drive me a little mad, having a one sided conversation. Hell, if you're not with me just say so. What's your name anyhow?"
"Angloid. Yours?"
"Chance," said Chance the cat. She wears football kleats. Fat gathers in rolls round the neck. This cat is a real treat. Her clothedness was as nudity was, in ways that even fully nude persons cannot emulate; the movements of her flesh so unlike the human ideal, no not in any century.
"Why does my flesh feel so like stone?" said Chance the cat aloud, to the shim, but acknowledging only an itch on her wrist.
"Do you have a moment this afternoon?" said the shim to Chance the cat.
"A moment for what?"
"I am a doctor, I can examine your physical ailments. I am just right down the street, at 1503 Adams."
"1503 Adams."
"I am leaving now. You can knock on the front door. When do you expect that you will be arriving?"
"Within the hour."
"That works," said the shim, and departed with a handshake.

"Did you smoke?" Asked Doctor Fatbash of his client.
"Yes ma'am I did."
The shim chuckled to himself at the word 'ma'am'. "Well that's why you have cancer."
"I'll be darned. Thank you ma'am," said Chance the cat, and rose to her feet. Rather clumsily. And exited the office, and exited the building, with a sexually vulgar posture .... the Doctor did note, an unintentional swaying motion in the buttock ... a disturbance of air ... an obnoxious arousing motion ... the Doctor did note.
The shim was suffering Doctor delusions for several years now: diagnosing, prescribing. He had many patients who were otherwise known as neighbors and acquaintences, and most regularly, friends. His office was otherwise his sleeping space, consulting his patients over a table covered in newspaper, mugs of stale coffee, and hash crumbs.
This office was located on 1405 Adams St, between two bike shops -- one which sold bars of soap and one that didn't. Eventually even that was typical of both, and the shops became identical, except they were competetors. There was a time, however, when Pat Doland of Doland Bicycle was adamently against the sale of bar soaps ("worthless" he called such merchandise,) but he began selling them out of sheer mockery of PENNEY'S BIKE SHOP. Doland Bicycle began then holding puppet shows for the birthdays of young children, whose futures were plotted and suppositioned by the tiny marrionettes atop a grand wooden stage in the garage of the shoppe. PENNEY'S could not rival such ingenuity, and eventually went out of business.
The Doctor diagnosed Pat Doland with a case of severe immorality, specifically of the carnal degree, wherein territorial pissings occur. The shim prescribed 300 mg of niacin daily. "Those are the orders from the mothership," instructed Dr. Fatbash, indicating an alarm clock, digital read, fm radio on the bedroom counter ... a radio prone to bouts of spo7. ANGLOID and LLOYD

"No, nothing that I am thinking right now shall be scripted. In this body, the sensations felt in present tense ... warmth, confusion, indecision, uncertainty, insecurity ... worry. Why should one being forego, without merit, such grandeur ... in an existence so short, I mean brief, and so insignificant. A little life wasted on preserving the unsacred longevity of the human specie." He began to hyperventilate for a moment, before he digressed, "It's okay dear. Relax, relax. Get a television and some cable."
That's what Angloid the shim said to itself under the staircase, hunched over like a rat in the night; yes, it was nearing 2am and in the flashlight of a passer-by the creature's eyes glowed green like toxic caverns.
"Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh," the creature grinned to itself at an amusing thought, perhaps sinister in nature. Rubbed its hands together before its face. Really living quite lavish in a heavy overcoat with a cup of tea. The glow in the eye clouded over as a cataract ... the rat, the shim, sprung forth and launched itself from beneath the stairwell where it sat ... made haste down the alleyway, its brown overcoat flapping in the autumn night wind. It ran hunched over and appeared to foam at the mouth. Made a left onto 13th avenue towards the noise of people and the glow of floodlights upon them. They individually each to himself notice (from behind their cigarettes) the shim fast approaching, from a distance appeared as a lurching leper, but as the figure approached, seemed to transform into a gorgeous woman. The swarm of them saw 'her', but many of their eyes averted. "Aren't you a model?" one man enquired with wide eyes and slack jaw. Another man attempted to greet her.
"Is that a man or a woman?" two middle aged women cackled and honked. "I think it is a little boy," replied the other.
"Magical thinking will also be your end," said of a dark-haired woman in a black cloak, behind penetrating laser eyes, who stood just before the entrance into the dark cave where the crowd of smokers grathered.
Inside was a night-hive of glowing humans and each one pulsed in unison. "Thanks for coming to the show," came from a single speaker betwixt the hive. They merged together. They expressed their sexuality. "There are some thoughts not to let leave the parimeter of your person," said the talking box.
From the crowd came forth a tall spindly alien called Lloyd, who has had previous interactions with the shim, and grabbed 'her' (as now he is a she) by the hand, and their dancing so shocked the crowd that nearly all departed.
Lloyd and the shim then too departed, and climbed a three-story building and settled there atop the roof. Lloyd then spoke, "In the warehouse it was a matter of obligation that we freaks should dance before five hundred petty kings! Yes they laughed but it was our duty!"
Said Angloid, "Upon having seen before mine eyes, (for it was shewn) that! we are such a disgusting creature who deserved a demise so fine as that which is to be inflicted by the hand of he who wrongs himself!!"
Said Lloyd, "Hahaha! I will have a laugh and a half at this species ending; a bright white light will fill the overhead and envelop the Earth entire!"
"Yes! For I am a clown, with the rotgut esophogus breath at the end of humanity, looking up, and seeing it happen! I am a fool to end all fools!"
And then with a ruined mind, Angloid realized 'it was to show me that a mind can be ruined!' she said, "A tortured young mind with no ability to define the terror to outside persons! All they can see is the terrified look, who has no significance in the present moment. THESE people do not think with images! I do not know with what they think. But I do think them not like me ... lesser at times yes!"
Lloyd's laughter came akin to speeding bullets, "you think they are lesser!" he exclaimed.
"But they think me lesser, in my singularity, terrible singularity, miserable by myself, a penchant toward self-hatred, alone in a bedroom staring at the wall for hours, where a mind draws conclusions, while they! come together in unison, not-to-think! And when I say 'they' yes, I do truly mean the entirety of not-mes!"
"Hmm yes I have heard this conversation before in quite every piece of adolescent literature."
"Quite-every?" she turned down her eyes.
"It does not discredit your intelligence or ability, but it is revealing of your age," he said, "it is not quite until twnety-four that one begins to realize death-n-shit."
"So far as I can see, the only reason to remain in the physical realm is for love!" she retreated by the abrasive tone of her own speech, between her small white hands she went.
Lloyd grinned, "even that will reveal itself a farce."
"No!" she exclaimed. "Now do I realize the pointlessness, the heavy suffering pain of having reached physicality!"

They parted at the stoplight on 17th avenue, on the uptown fringe of the city, where one can safely travel on foot, after many beers, into the pitch darkness of 2am, without even a crump fraction of human contact. Yes beneath the highrise bank and wine bar, and the paper company, all apart of the same buildingwhich sits across from the restaurant and theater, and the cowboy bear bar.
Yes there they parted, and the shim couldn't think of anybody but himself, now returning to his masculine state, into the darkness of 2am, wherein police cars make up the majority of traffic. Yes and he begins to slink, and rub his hands, as if he were contemplating eating flies and spiders in the windowsill of an asylum, and his eyes turn mean and green, and shock like static electricity between the brows of all passers by, and one police car bacame wary of the slinking thing, though it posed no obvious threat, but was hypnotized by the glaring, loud self-absorbtion, the egotism of the seemingly female figure smiling to itself at the crosswalk. The policeman followed the figure home, the three fourths of a mile in its entirety, and nothing was gained ... but there remained a nauseous curiosity that kept recurring through the night, the creature who lives at 1405 Adams st, as he lay beside his wife.

8. Alain/Lloyd

Having used his water ration for the day (state regulated,) Alain instead rubbed his hands around a wet dish towel used previously to soak a puddle of spilled milk. He paused and raised his face to himself in the mirror, "Have I wasted away my feeling-ability with brain soccer?"
"You look like shit," said Lloyd from the broom closet.
"Yeah I feel like one too. Gonna go out on Colfax and pick up a wild woman," he thought for a moment, plucking a hair from the tip of his nose, "never pick em up in front of 7-11. The cops have got it set up." he digressed, "So where do you go to pay a ticket?"
"I don't know, I haven't driven in years," replied the alien Lloyd.
Alain gazed out the window of his 6th floor studio. "Can I still manipulate the course of my being?"
"Are you angry?" said Lloyd, sweeping harder before the bathroom door. There was a rattlesnake in the radio.
Alain sat on the edge of the bathtub and lit half of a snubbed cigar, and he said, "I'd like to remain a child, but first to part from atop the ropes of preconception." He began building a chain of smoke rings.
Lloyd replied after a moment, "You must first become independant of your desire," he said, "you must kill your parasite with starvation to emerge clean from a new womb. You must realize that you are afraid, that everyone is afraid of approaching nothingness." He took the cigar from between Lloyds fingers and puffed on it, "You do realize that human behavior is not mathematic."
"I cannot forget my humiliation!" cried Lloyd, retreiving the cigar from between two abnormally long, white fingers.
"You successfully forgot that you ripped the crotch of your your trousers and gave everyone a drunken show. That was seven strangers. You will eventually forget all your humiliation. You ..."
Then, a man walked in, unplugged the television, which had previously been broadcasting a baseball game, and walked out with it!
The two gentlemen residents did not react until it was too late. Alain sighed and continued, "I am ready to confront myself and feel humiliation! For my false idol torn down. Hell, seems never to have come to fruition. I thought it was so solid."
Lloyd took the cigar and flicked it into the bathtub. Alain adjusted his stradling posture on the bathtub to that of a seated professor of economics, crossed his legs like a lady and crossed his fingers.
Lloyd spoke, "NOW repeat after me."
"Okay go ahead," said Alain.
"Grab your onyx," said Lloyd. Alain reached up and gripped the stone necklace that was tied round his neck by a piece of black hemp rope.
"Repeat after me now. Close your eyes. TO MY GREATER SELF ..."
"To my greater self ..."
"BESTOW ME WITH ALL-ENCOMPASSING COURAGE ..."
"Bestow me ..."
"THE ABILITY, EVEN SELFISHLY, TO EMBRACE, AND TO LOVE MYSELF ABOVE ALL OTHERS ..."
"To embrace and to love myself ..."
"TO PURSUE ONLY MYSELF, FOR MYSELF ..."
"Hmm ..."
"IT IS WITHIN SUCH NONACTION, WITHOUT ANY EFFORT, EXCEPT BY LOVE, THAT ALL THINGS ARE MINE, AND I WILL BELONG TO ALL OF MANKIND."
"Hold on, I think I hear the oven timer."
"I didn't turn it on, are you cooking something?"
"Yes and no. Technically I am burning a locust that I found in my sock. I didn't want to forget."
"That's that smell?"
"Please continue Lloyd, I do so love your mantras."
Lloyd said, "you ought to think less of the Ultimate Deminse, because if it happens slowly, humankind shall adapt, and if it happens quickly, you will never know it occurred."
"I don't know if ... well, I cannot find appreciation for that concept now, or this advice, because it causes my mind a great deal of pain. But perhaps I will thank you someday but I am cursing you now! Or perhaps I curse you now and also someday, when the Ultimate Demise rears its head like a rabid fire-caught mustang."
"That sounds Biblical."
"I know I know," Alain put his hands to his temples and pressed with his palms as a vice. Lloyd was suddenly repulsed at the fleeting but potent demonstration of autistic gesturing, where he remained composed. Alain could sense distress and flinched his face. He continued, "my mother would prefer me not to smoke," he said, offering a pack of cigarettes to the alien grey. Lloyd was nearly then overjoyed by the promise of vice, and gestured then with volumous laughter which came shrill as lasers, aspects of which were inaudible to the human ear. "I hardly know how to operate on this planet without vice."
Alain offered some human perspective, "some of us are cursed by a leeching thing from beyond the grave," he said, "lured by the beautiful actions of others, who are also under the spell of vice." As he was saying this, meanwhile he was also examining a louse he had pulled from his scalp. Flicked it, "yes and then we cannot get on without it. Can't be awakened from bed without the promise of vice."
"What exactly are you using?" Lloyd enquired at the severity of the statement.
"Caffeine," said Alain, and there was a momentary silence between them.
After a moment Lloyd said, "and nothing?"
"The occasional this-or-that."
"Who does this not define?" Lloyd digressed, "perhaps a preist and hardly ever. May I say it? You are quite average."
That came down like a swat on the mouth, and Alain cringed at the mention of mediocrity. "Yes, mediocrity. Another thing that plagues the common man, and his sister and his wife, and her lover and his mistress. And her man." said Alain.

8. Dugg's Drug Bunker

"Ain't you gonna kill that timer?" Lloyd gestured in the direction of the kitchen. When Alain returned he came with a sheet wrapped around his torso. He motioned for Lloyd to continue speaking.
"Repeat after me now. Now, I DESIRE FOR MYSELF TO BE DESIRED BY ALL. Go ahead."
"I desire for myself," Alain began, "to be desired by all. That sounds quite dangerous. Maybe I'll get mauled."
"Listen now ... TO ABSORB THE LOVE OF SEVEN BILLION SOULS, AND TO LET IT FLOW FROM ME LIKE A FOUNTAIN, IN THE MOTHERLAND ... now go ahead."
"To ... absorb ..."
"The love ..."
"Yes, the love ..."
"Of seven billion ... pay attention now ..."
"Of a seven billion souls ... and let it flow from me like a fountain."
"In the motherland."
"Yeah, that," said Alain, and it was only because the curtain was sucked into the hallway and the air pressure changed that the two men became aware that Dugg had entered the building, and the cupboards began to open and shut.
"That Dugg?" axed Lloyd.
"Yup," said Alain, "he's looking for bagels. He's smoking a cigarette I can smell it."
They heard footsteps ascending the stairs, and a shadow of a figure fell into the room, the bathroom where they sat.
"Gay?" stated Dugg in the doorframe.
"Doug this is Lloyd," said Alain.
"I remember you. Where are the bagels?"
"I had the last one today," said Alain.
"Augh ... give me three bucks then, I'll go to the store."
"I seen Arbol the night jogger out the door just now ... and it ain't even night!" observed Alain from before the window, "Look, he's a rhythm runner!"
"Come on, you owe me," said Dugg.
"I bought those bagels. You give me three bucks. How's that?" proposed Alain.
Dugg waved away Alain, and dismissed himself, and exited into the stairwell.
Lloyd said, "OUTRAGEOUS character. But not an outrageous guy."

Lloyd then departed in search of his pupil, the shim, Angloid Fatbash, who he referred to in his notes as Angloid. He finds the shim in his fucking overhauls and high heels, business shoes to be clear, and he got green like lime green glowing eyes in the light of the alleyway. The shim, (s)he was clicking a policeman's pen. Just then he turned around to fast footsteps, and saw the silhouette of a man leisurely running. Observed Angloid, "Arbol the night jogger not scared nuffin. Whatchu got for me Arbol?" he raised his voice slightly. Arbol just kept running.
"Snuck right up on me," Lloyd said to the Angloid. He axed, "what are you on? Well then what are you thinking about?"
"Frightening endeavors," said the shim, a she now, though the way she said it, she could have been a man. Clicking the pen, "in past episodes we were removed from verbal sympathy. That is, we could not sympathise with the works of others."
"I don't remember," Lloyd placated.
"Springtime came," Angloid leaned, "and the loins of men alit. And love has a scent." her eyes half shut, she reached down from the edge of the dumpster where she sat for a guitar pick and a cigarette. She pointed accusingly to Lloyd, "and that's what you think of! You think you know my future but you can't predict my actions!"

Outside in Schmegtown 1977, and the odor in the air was like that of an ol' pervert's breath. It was heavy and warm and with a metallic nose, and the sun shone in the autumntime, of late November, and there was a people here and a people there, and there went that man Alain beneath the highrise lofts, and a telephone rang from within an open window, and was never answered, so far as he walked. He turned the corner onto the 1300th block of Welton, and pushed through the revolving doors of a highrise brick building, and pressed two buttons simultaneously, and he spoke his name into the intercom, and was replied to with a buzz, and the clicking unlock of the glass door before him.
From behind the door of apartment 1 came big brass jazz, which ended then and became the voice of a radio host. He ascended the stairs to the third floor and came to apartment 7, faintly to the whir of a vacuum, and then knocked on the door, and was instructed to "come in," without any enthusiasm from a man, and entered the room to find professor Hayschack dutifully peeling a scab from his elbow while he lie sideways on the couch. Leaning then on that same elbow, he looked up and simply said, "Alain Dixon ..."
"I brought you some fruit from the market," said Alain, and lowered his briefcase to the ground.
"I am interested," said professor Hayschack to his scab. He raised his elbow to observe it again, to find it dripping blood into the black sheet what covered the couch before the window.
"This is a nice view from your window," observed Alain. The room smelled of Pinesol and the walls were covered in masking tape. There were newspapers scattered about, on the floor, chairs, couch, anything with surface area. There were coffee mugs and cigarette butts gathered on the window sills. But from the window there was a city alleyway with steaming dumpsters and uncovered manholes and an occasional cat and the whole bit. There, just then, went Arbol the night jogger, but it was daytime yet, and Alain approached the window, postured to lift the frame then did, and shouted, "Arbol whatchu got for me?"
Arbol lost his rhythm and zigzagged to a complete stop near a pile of wet books beside a dumpster.
"You know that guy?" spoke professor Hayschack from between blots with a wet rag to his bleeding scab.
"No," said Alain, "but I know of him."
"Why you gotta bother people you don't know?"
Alain stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. "Well I suppose I wouldn't like it either," he said, and neither spoke for a moment while the cole train howled and the cathedral bells began an afternoon hymnal. Alain said, "I took some polaroids of my recent vandalisms."
"I am interested, I am," said professor Hayschack, "but you didn't call me beforehand and ..."
"You're otherwise engaged."
"Yes that too, but mostly I have not had time to prepare myself to be inspecting polaroids today."
"Why, cause its too heavy for an offhand visit?"
Professor Hayschack drew in his chin and raised his brow with an inhale, "I wouldn't go as far as to claim that, as much as, y'see, I am not in the mode to encourage any young people today. In their rebellious youthful endeavors. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in four hours, not now," and he added, "but maybe never again. I just got off the telephone with Ralph Murphey."
"And what did he have to say?" asked Lloyd, "especially to have disenchanted you against the higher pursuits of bright young minds like mine!"
"Your generation -- now, don't come at me, because this is my studio -- all you young folks think you are messiahs, the saviors that mankind has been plotting and fashioning on the walls of caves since the beginning, and through the renaissance, because your brain is as good as any computer almost. I am not intimidated, by any means, but I am growing less tolerant, I can tell you."
"Well that's fine, but pretty sad that you think that of me. You said I was one of your brightest students."
"Yes and I don't take that back," he waved two fingers, "but if I had somehow falsely built your esteem beyond your works, and your ability to match in reality what you THINK you are in concept, and referencing what words others have used to define you, then I regretfully admit that I created a monster."
"Are you speaking specifically of ME, professor, or are you speaking in generalizations?"
"Neither and both," he settled.
Alain became disheartened. "Well, I'm glad I possess the presense of mind to be able to dismiss the false perceptions of a professor, in a position of authority."
"If my words don't sting you now, they will tonight when you are lying in bed."
Alain gave a sigh of resignation. "Okay, I can see that I am not wanted here," he unfastened the briefcase and began unloading various fruits onto the newspaper atop the coffee table. "Do you still want these fruits?"
"I'll take them," said professor Hayschack, laborously reaching beneath the couch to retrieve an accordian.
"Well where should I put it? Is here good?"
"Just leave it under the mirror," he pointed with his big toe. Alain picked up the fruits once more and moved the handful to the counter beneath the mirror and suddenly confronted his reflection and was startled by what he saw. He stepped back and gasped, "You did that on purpose!" he turned sharply to the professor, "You tricked me!"
"I always punctuate my points with real-life examples."
"Okay, I understand now. I get it."
"Then what is it?" the professor made his first eye contact of the entire day. "Go ahead, talk to me."
He succumbed to the professor's penetrating look, "That I am not the same person that I imagine myself to be!" He gave a shriek of autism.
"Yes!" cried the professor, "I see you are learning something ... generation Q ... for Queer!" with eyes of self realized idiocy and mediocrity, Alain nodded his head and exited the room.

Sexually ashamed. As they day drew on, that's what the sum of his existence became. So he called up Angloid Fatbash, and received an answering machine which made a hideous growling sound, and said into it, "Hello miss Fatbash, I would like to invite you out to a romantic movie, but I hesitate upon the thought that we will be voyeuring into another person's sex life, which I consider very private. Don't you agree?" and clicked off the phone, and turned the knob on the radio and brought in the jazz. He stood in his kitchen with his ear against the wall listening to the running waterpipes conducted by the toilet in room 14. "Lazy brain," with his eyes closed he said, "lazy lazy brain don't do no good for no-one."
He approached the large lobby mirror and touched his eyebrows, and pushed upon various areas of sollen flesh, and he remembered the dream from last night, how she teased. His body was weary from mind-growth and he slumped turned off the lights all the way to the bedroom, and lay face-first into his dirt-stained sheets.
He awoke to Angloid's glowing green eyes standing in the dark at the foot of his bed. "You forgot to apply body lotion," she said, and ran her nose along the entire length of her arm. Alain had the swollen shut eyes of a newly hatched bird and reached up for the light switch. Angloid's pupils were dilated fully, as two black moons, as a nocturnal mammal and not a man. They were unaffected, even, by the light. She had a stoneface too. Lloyd was taken aback. "What's the matter with you? Is there something wrong?"
"Yes my wits have been heightened."
"It seems the opposite."
"Don't watch me."
Alain squinted, "What?"
"Not gonna repeat myself." Utter seriousness, of the most vile type.
"Freak. Always a freak," observed Alain.
She laughed, as though it were a compliment. "I'll leave if you prefer," she threatened.
He succumbed, "no, don't leave."
"Did you have a dream about me?"
"No!" he furrowed his brow, "of course not!" and with humiliation he took VIKING strides out the door. He could feel her eye-fire all the way out!
He found himself in the front courtyard and shouted up to his second floor window, from between two trees, "Blast these animal bodies!" he stated, and she came to the window and looked down upon him. "We are being animals," said Alain, "I would laugh if you really tried to kick me out of my own house."
"I bet you will die from being an idiot." she said, and mutual hate floated between them like a vapor.

In bed, the two nudes beneath the sheets.
She turned to him, after a long sweaty silence, "Sorry, I will not be taking you with me any further."
He spoke from behind his chin on the bed, "You suppose that you are responsible for my good fortune."
"No, but I laid your path, and I will be taking you no further."
Knowing not that beyond the front window was a hysterical transgendered MTF (male to female) and suppose she were exercising the idea of death, poor soul! Alain let all of his soul toward the good fortune of HER.
He slowly stood, and seated himself before his typewriter, and spoke, "There are no immediate conclusions," the typewriter coughs, "it is projected before my eyes and is laid. Over time. I am only a reflection of humanity, a figment with a conscience. A projection, not a projector. I am here but never was I."
"You must forgive my otherworldly actions and use care when imitating them. They will not work out for you. Young demon so handsome. Grusome thoughts one such has had. Do not even sit still for a minute." She stood naked from the bed and looked over his shoulder, "It is hebrew!" she exclaimed a pile of typewritten papers on the drafting table in the corner of the room.
"Girl, you will never know that I wrote a book about you, and to you, but you are a real American face, those pictures you take with your ..." his words faded out. "You got me into a lot of trouble, you know that?" said Alain.

8. LOVE after the flight discovery.

Angloid's house.
"If the human evolves, what will it be called?" asked Alain.
"The neanderthal came to call himself a man," replied the shim, having returned to his masculine state. He was an absolutely miserable human being. He slurred to the jazz trumpet, "it's Darwinian hearsay," he continued, "he never did consider the sterilization of populations."
"But are you really human?" enquired Alain of Angloid the shim.
"Yes I take my fish oil supplements daily."
"B-but they said they'd make it look like you never existed, burn your creations your evidence."
There were blue fuzzballs from the laundry sticking all over his skin. There had been lotion applied.
"We're closer to the stone age than we are to the end," said Angloid, "we're still in the stone age," he said, and lit his cigarette.
Alain is in love with Angloid's apartment, bombarded by art! "Come to think of it," he said, "I cannot think of one person who likes me for who I am." he leafed through a pile of paper. "This deserves to be shown," he indicated a painting.
"I can't believe it was taken from me," said Angloid, "the pen was taken from me," he said into the palms of his hands.

9. Alain's House

Vengence was expressed that day. An animal was dismissed.
Alain began to purr. "Get away from me you pervy cat!" Angloid pushed him to the ground. "I mean it for real or else!"
That's what she said. The sound of human utterings smeared along the pavement through the windows of cars and into the wide front window. Angloid stood before the window, grasping a loud floral sportcoat, and put it on as a statement of parting. She spoke from the uncertain depths of her mind, "No ... a woman specimen will not last!" she said of herself, "it will reveal its animalism much sooner, it will crumble like a dirtball if proded with a sharp stick ... and yet, there will be no cheating! Although there has been some cheating ... but only in properties! Not in love. I mean computer technology!" she concluded.
"What are you going on about? I cannot access exactly what you mean." replied Alain, who remained naked and standing upright now.
"Just ressurrect your dream from the night previous."
"But it is all the same time. Dreams do not apply to specific nights."
"HMM. You mean in the dream realm."
"Yes. There is no yesternight's dream. They are all yesternight's dream."
"You mean there is no yesternight," she leaned back and clapped her hands. "Indeed that is exactly what I mean!" She expressed great joy.
"What excites you? That you understand it or you knew it before me?"
"You sound so suspicious of my interpretation of you," she was aghast at the accusation, "perhaps take a look at yourself."
"Yes, instead of others."
"Through their eyes? That's not right, you know."
He guffawed, "what a confident moral judgement derived from no fact!"
"I only said it wasn't right."
"Take a look at what you're saying for once!" he took a seat in the kitchen, with a dejected look.
"That reminds me. Let me tell you about the time a mortal found me making love to myself," she looked into his eyes to gauge his reaction and continued, only guessing his thoughts, "No it wasn't singular, there were two entities in the body making it."
"And what happened?" his voice had acquired an impatient tone.
"They became frightened and wide eyed and darted out of the room." she listened to the atmosphere from the window. "Do you hear that squealing trumpet?"
-----------------------+
"THE MOON IS A MIRROR
DONT WRITE ABOUT PERSONAL EPITAPHS,
THE SKY IS A BOULLION,(sp)
THE SPOON IS ASKEW,
DONT BRING DOWN NO MORE THEM PECKOFVS."
That is what he sang. He was relieved to have parted with Ms. Fatbash, whose good senses had long ago parted, and whose mind seemed to be detreriorating drastically by the hour. He walked five blocks to his apartment building with a numb urgency of escape that disabled his senses.
He had not locked the front door, for he posessed no valuables, no furniture and no fear of psycho killers. On the radio it was heard, in the voice of an old man, "It is a quest of courage to face oneself. Everyone will abandon you. But you will recognize each other ... wherein true love is found! Though there are few who find it. I am not afraid of anybody because I am scarier than them all!"
He gathered his books and secured them in his satchel. He went to the cafe and paid for his coffee in nickles. He pulled up a chair on the patio and noticed a funny man from the corner of his eye. Alain sipped from the mug and turned his eyes slowly and casually to examine the man. They made immediate eye contact. The man spoke, with a defensive, condescending air, "Thank you for looking over here!"
"Hi, how are you?" said Alain politely.
The man gave a piteous look, "Oh you poor uneducated thing." He wore six necklaces each of a seperate stone. Pig nosed he spoke "Oh you poor uneducated thing." The sky grew tornadoes. The man, with his eyes locked with Alain's, traveled his soul into Alain's body. There was a halo of light surrounding his person. Alain began to weep uncontrollably. "Don't worry my child," spoke the man, "I can see the light in your eyes. It's alright my child go ahead and cry." He began to chant 'hare hare krishna'.

"That was the second time I met the devil. He was staring at me with animal indifference. It was there. And with the same stoneface I gave him one back. I came into the city with a scorn for what I saw and he musta smelled it or I was wearing it like a mask. I don't know what got into me but I felt tears reluctantly. The same forcedly-not sentiment appeared on his face." He paused to hear Margrit's reaction, who sat wide-eyed in disbelief at what she heard, catatonic with heavy thought. Alain continued, "It frustrates such a predator as I to succumb to such sympathy. Why can I not just use my bare fists? When the sun sets fire the earth, no amount of love will save my life. When my enemies boil over with hate they will reduce my tears to a squeel, a mere nuisance. The great equalizer is coming. The air is growing warm. The sky is brightening. It is melting my eyes!
"I must ask that you never speak the origins of my stories. I met the devil outside the Wuzza-Name's cafe, in the romance of August amidst the seldom-feelers of Denver, the lack of freakdom, when the sky was thick upon the earth and in the lungs. He wore the skin and scalp of a long-rotten corpse. He wore one dangling earring with a bright teal-colored stone. "That was the second time I met the devil," he spoke to Margrit the neighbor girl. She pulled her hair with great anxiety, her brow shiny with sweat. She had shaking swollen joints on her fingers. She said, "I no longer wish to hear about things so sick and twisted." She picked her pants from the ground, and she put them on.
"I can think now of nothing else," spoke Alain. "Are you leaving? Be careful in the rain out there, this is when the dying become the dead of mind. Protect your life, I need you."
The sky was boiling over. "You have aged sixty years since I saw you last," she said in parting down the red brick alleyway in the heavy rain, her joints stiffened with arthritis. She walked like a scarecrow.
Alain yelled after her, "We are only twenty three and twenty two years old!" His hair was grey and white, his hands calloused from injury. He lay down in her scent.

He stared at the ceiling and thought of his enemies. His head grew swollen with doubt.
In the early morning hours,or what was perceived to be, as the dark remnants of a storm covered the dawning horizon line. The aluminum pipes were drummed by small rubber hammers. A large locust had chewed a hole in the window screen and came inside. Alain took the insect by his forefinger and thumb and stepped into the garden, where his feet sunk into the earth. The locust opened his butterfly wings and clicked through the rain into the darkness so much nearer to the ground for now. Even the city had been swallowed. The radio spoke, "check out 67.8 FM's Denver bucket list! Things to do before you die." There were hoofbeats in the street moving toward Colfax Ave.
He checked the clock and when he saw it was 10:01 am, his biological clock began to shudder. He turned on the light and noticed a bright red rash on his left arm. A man on the sidewalk outside of the window was speaking to another, "Remember when Obama was hanging out with Richardson for a couple of weeks? Remember that?"
He went back to his bed with his sheets stuffed against a wall. A saxophone slow enough to bring his mind to seventeen year old Opal, when had called that morning as promised, but covertly, against the better knowledge of Margrit.
At the bus stop Alain heard his name, a funny voice from the far distance. It was Tekang from Ethiopia, with a softball-sized dent on his bald, ballish head.
"Hi Tekang!" Alain waved.
"Do you have a cigarette?" he spoke with a toothless, bare-gummed low whistle.
"A cigarette?" Alain patted his satchel, "No, I didn't bring them with me."
"I swear to god you have a cigarette!" Tekang accused.
"Meet me at the restaurant at ten o clock tomorrow morning and I'll have one for you."
They shook hands.

10. Gallery

"That chicken shit doesn't come around now. Those knuckleheads next door have NO right to treat me like an animal. They watch me and scrutinize my every move, and they lie! They outright fictionalize my life!"
"Because they are purposeless and utterly bored with their lives."