CCP015-Parrots and A Purple Horn

Drowning out the parrots with a loud steel drum. I look up at the sky, straight up and see the parrots flying by. They are worth thousands of dollars. If I caught one I could pay rent but I don't have a net big enough and I'm not limber enough. The sky screams with the anger of a thousand disturbed parrots. We grabbed his purple horn and pointed it straight up. The blast scattered these creatures all across Sierra Madre. The miners took noticed and started burning coal. We had no idea this was the signal they were waiting for. Steam began to rise from cracks in the pavement. We sniffed the air. This wasn't clean air at all but noxious fumes squeezing through the cracks. Gasping for air and seeking somewhere cold to escape the great heat from below. We scatter across the landscape. Throats closed, eyes burning, tears turning to crusty salt deposits, all this and no relief in any direction. Pretty soon orange drops of some kind of liquid were trickling down from what was now a burnt Sienna sky. The drops burned on contact and began to eat away at our skin. Only people in windbreakers were spared but for their faces. Holes eaten away in their cheeks exposing cheekbone upon cheekbone as far as the eye could see. We fucked up blowing that horn and this is all our fault. If it weren't for that cruel urge to disrupt the parrots then the coal wouldn't burn and our faces would still be intact

CCP014-The Current Goes Back and Forth

Stepping out of the elevator we immediately came upon a sea of white trash. Wading our way through with almost brass knuckles and dead eye stares. We watched the board for the right time and we didn’t find anything. Wading through the sea again we ducked down an alleyway. The light bouncing off the grays and whites. A man in the corner eyes us suspiciously while he smokes a cigarette illegally. His eyes switch from you to me and back again. He can see we are connected in a way he has never seen and the communication is full and complete. The conversation never ceases and never bores. Sleeping next to you is always a better option than not sleeping next to you. The rest is peaceful. The rest is short. I splash water on my face before I go to bed and watch the water drip off the tip of my nose into the sink. Some say the water spirals the wrong way down the sink but I have to disagree. The water’s just fine. I think about nothing as I fall to sleep and my mind is alive with everything I suppressed the night before. I wake up fresh and know that I want to lounge out on a couch and turn up Rocket 88 until the windows blow out. I can sit with you for hours. The words wafting up into the ceiling fan getting spread around to every corner. My voice carries and you tell me we might get into trouble, but we really don’t care. It’s only a formality. I have plugged into your psyche and the current goes both ways.

CCP013-The Last Halloween

I go out trick or treating and I hear some rumor about razorblades in apples and poison on the candy. I go door to door putting out my hand, waiting for the prize. I tug at all the ill fitting parts of my costume. I wish my mom hadn’t given me a gun to carry while on this mission. I make sure the eyeholes are in just the right spot so I can see out but there is a little bit of mask blocking my vision. This sense of excitement, this sense of wonder, not knowing what your bottom half of the eye sees. I go up the walkway, ring the doorbell and put out my hand again and again. My bag gets filled every time. The other kids all have the same candy from the same neighborhood. I make sure to smell the inside of my mask and wonder do other kids also love this smell? It rained last Halloween when my brother was born, my parents took me out anyway. They could feel my jealousy so they gave me a gun the next Halloween. I have to keep smelling to mask these feelings. Once more up the walkway, placing my hand out to grasp the loot. This was the last house and we started walking home. The sun had just gone down and my parents didn’t like to trick or treat after dark. Upon reaching our house I see my mom in the kitchen through the window. Hunkered over the stove just so we could eat that night. Maybe she has made something fun, maybe not. My mother yells at me to not eat any candy until after dinner. I think to myself “what does she know?” and I sit down on the floor with my legs spread and the bag between them. I start to separate my piles; one for chocolate, one for sour and one for sweet. I take one candy from each. The chocolate drips down my throat. The sour burns on the way down and churns my stomach. As I fall backwards I pop the sweet into my mouth, bite down, and feel the razorblade slice the roof of my mouth. I quickly pull it out of my mouth, my hand is red and as I fall backwards from the poison I realize the rumors were true.

CCP012-Face Slammed Ocean

Dragged bloody knuckled and battered through a city of salt only to bathe in a deep throbbing hum resonating from a giant spiraled tower made of coral. Out the top bursts a stream of thick salty water, more salt than water, no hydration in sight, just the constant thrum of the coral barfing out my name.

Bits of static strike at my head and the light is flickering in this dark basement, an electronic water drip spikes my attention every so often, I really hate this place but I have to call it home. Occasionally I hear trucks go by but I cant see out and its so infrequent I don’t bother calling for help. There is no light to tell the time, there are no sounds to tell the time, only bursts of backfire and truck rumbling. Sometimes I can tell its night but not very often.

I wish I was back in my coral prison, it's much better than the dank room I am locked in now. At least underwater I could catch glimpses of the Sun's rays darting in and out and in between the trigger fish. The orange coral trapping me under the waves. Breaking free from this prison would surely result in almighty doom. The waves pounding my face into the sandy ocean floor and scraping my knees on bits of stray coral. These are the things I face. My face pressed into the ocean, screaming into the sand. I can only think of a few things as my vision fades to black and I escape from my coral prison.