Page 221 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - Lili

I see a sneak peek to the back of the apartment. Zoo’s bed- room. I see a dark cave. An orange lava lamp glow exudes. A bed slinks off the frame sideways. Covers in tatters. Split open books on the floor with bent spines. A roll of paper towels next to the head of the bed, a bunch of crumpled up paper towels next to it.
I touch my friend’s back and move. We reach the patio balcony thing. It is very small. Four feet long by three feet deep. A broken chair up against the wall, the seat of it blown out, a few bongs with muddy water floating in them.
The three of us stand out there almost shoulder to shoulder. My friend. The social media star. And myself.
Zoo starts smoking a Marlboro. More decay. We look out. The view is of an alley down below and the Scientology parking lot across it. Hot lights. Whisper quiet. Graffiti. An errant fire engine siren.
“Not a bad view, eh?” Zoo says sarcastically.
“What do they do at that Scientology place?” my friend asks Zoo.
“I have no fucking idea. Nobody’s ever there. Except an occa- sional person getting in and out of one of those black mini-vans,” Zoo replies.
I examine a black mini-van. One of them has a sign on the side of it that read: BE THE LIGHT!
The three of us look out in a reverie. The alley down below starts turning into grey and sloshing concrete water. I see waves. My pupils are made oblong. I am landing on Mars with the Squids. I want to say something to the two of them, but I don’t... can’t. My mind won’t connect with my mouth. I’m made of peanut butter.
Zoo starts talking, “Do you know what my favorite thing is, guys?”
“What’s that?” I somehow manage to slop out with the pea- nut butter tongue. Or maybe I just imagine I slop it out.
“Dreaming of marriage. Finding a beautiful wife. Redhead. Moving back to Ohio with her,” Zoo says, as if he’s praying.
“You’re from Ohio?” my friend asks him.
“Yeah. Originally. I want to go back. At night I dream about it. Finding the girl. Just about every night I drive up the street in my Prius and go to KFC and get a six-piece bucket of fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and I sit in bed and eat it and think about her. Whoever she is. I want to get famous and find her. I thought I found her the other day on Instagram. But it wasn’t her. She disappeared. I don’t know where she went.”
“But aren’t you famous, already?” my friend asks, “With the six million followers?”
“I don’t know anybody!” Zoo hollers, surprisingly, his voice full of emotion and nicotine dust, “They don’t know me. The six million. A bunch of robots. It’s a bunch of plastic. I don’t know where she is. The girl I’m supposed to take back to Ohio, but she is out there somewhere. I have to believe!”
Ohio. Why does everyone come to Los Angeles from Ohio?
Then I hear a noise. Some squawk. I press my hand up to my ear. Something is wrong inside my skull. Something finally shattered. Maybe a stroke. Maybe my brain is now on its way
out. I look down below at the concrete water in the alley. Maybe someone is down there swimming with a spray paint can. Graffiti of culture.
I hear the squawk again. I look over. I am on the right, my friend is in the middle, and then Zoo to the left. Zoo is making the squawking noise. I see his face. Something is happening. Black tears roll down out of his eyes.
I try to speak but my mouth still won’t work. The Squids have a hold of my brain with their tentacles. A Grand Canyon of an echo chamber inside of me speaking in insane tongues.
Zoo starts shaking. He keeps making harsh noises. They pro- pel out of his throat. I instinctively back away and trip up on the blown-out chair, I kick one of the bongs over and it falls off the balcony, crashes down below into the concrete waves, explodes into bits of wretched glass. My friend backs up into me. Both of us stare at Zoo.
Zoo is now convulsing. Shrieking. His arms up in the air. His
hands sweating, drops of black salt water fall down. His feet lifted up. He begins to levitate.
“Zoo, what the fuck is going on?!” my friend yells.
I can’t move my mouth. I can’t feel my body. My finger- tips are the only things with any remote amount of sensa- tion. I grip my friend’s jacket so as not to fall over the side of the balcony into the undulating, rising seas of the alley, which now has giant blue fins sticking out of it, glinting. There are sharks down below. Great Whites. Waiting. Swirl- ing. Watching the humans as if they are food. Knowing full well that when the tsunami comes the humans won’t stand a chance.
Zoo doesn’t answer with words, instead he screams out over the side like a crow shot with a BB-Gun.
“Zoo. Answer me! Come back!” my friend yells at the tops of his lungs.
Finally, Zoo vomits some words, which can only be made out to sound like, “Six Million dead people! I can’t take it anymore!!!”
Zoo is now crying profusely. His eyeballs made of blue and vacuous light. His back starts shaking. He hunches over. His shirt begins to rip. I nearly jump over the side and into the water with the sharks in abject horror.
Zoo’s shirt explodes off of him. He vomits out some bile while keeled over. Something begins protruding violently out from his back. Growing. He is heaving and screaming in agony. The things growing out of his back now reveal themselves to be giant wings. Blood is all over his feet. The wings explode out now in full force, as large as an eagle. Zoo doubles over in vicious pain. The wings start to flap, newly born implements.
I try to lift my arms up to rub my eyes but nothing happens. I feel thick, dense, too heavy. I am locked inside my brain. I see black stars grow behind Zoo. And then he lifts up off the balcony and flaps the wings. His face is vacant. His eyes bulge and are dangerous, and, as if con- trolled by the fresh and blood-soaked wings, he flies off, above the shark infested waters. He flaps there for some time. My friend and I stare out in awe.
“Zoo, what the fuck is going on?” my friend says, in more of a whisper now, empty of reality.
I consider taking out my phone and filming it all. Maybe this is the greatest Instagram video ever recorded. I would then have six million followers. I would go viral. Finally. But I can’t move. I can’t feel. Only watch. Witness.
Zoo says nothing. More concerned with the new giant limbs moving above him. He smiles. He flaps harder. He lifts higher into the air.
“Zoo?” my friend says, again, pleading, empty of hope, scratching at the surface of sanity, the fake name falling flat off his vocal cords.
The smile grows wider on Zoo’s face. The wings flap harder, the sound reverberates off of them heavily. Whoosh. Then he goes up higher and higher. Into the night sky. Moving. Away...
My friend and I watch.
Zoo is gone.
Disappears into the light of the moon.
Eclipsed. Gone. Blackness.
The water begins to rise higher and higher below us. Elec-
tricity plays on its surface. Envelopes the city. Swallows up the narcissism and Ego.
We fall. My friend and I. Down we go.
Holding one another tightly. Feeling one another’s heart beats.
Crying for our Mothers and retreating childhood memories of running through fields of nature, untouched by social media.
Not fully able to stop the declension. Amongst the sharks. Prepare to be taken. Still hopeful, somehow, an ember of it, yet still we prepare.
All of this ushered along by the THC Squids. Thank God. Some semblance of divinity in the high. It is the best I can do. We can do.
Then the tentacles wrap around the bodies.
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