Sortes Discordia

by Brian Gonzalez

I
 

At last I’m through with trying to fill this page for the sake of none other than filling this page–this void–with at least as far as I know important bits of information. There is nothing I can say to change your mind. It’s not a matter of what I do or whether or not I go along with doing it but rather a matter of whether or not I simply and sincerely put it like I see it; sharp & clear. The night was as cold as it was rowdy, making me shiver through my sheets and wake all the more hastily. I felt a chill down my spine. My body quivered. Night terrors again.
 

I leaned forward in bed drenched in a cold sweat and found myself alone, the moonlight breaking gently through the cracks of my dusty brown curtains, with the smell of raw sewage settling on the tip of my nose and cluttering my nostrils. I laid there for a second or two with a headache and an empty flask of bourbon staring at me bleakly from the end of my bed. I was on that broken routine for a solid week. Must’ve been the monkey on my back. I looked at myself in the mirror of the moon lit room.
 

-Fuck, I said
 

Eyes wide-open like a corpse. Scabs plastered over the area the syringe hung out of my arm each time I had a drill, and I was quickly running out of veins. I looked virtually dead, like a brain-eating zombie right out of Night of the Living Dead, only much more insulting to the senses. It was repulsive. I had never witnessed such a hideous creature, but it was of my own doing, and there wasn’t any time to be sorry. Still, it was like peering into the eyes of a ghost.
 

Ready to scurry into the shadows, I made my way down the narrow, leaden stairway, out of my cold water flat onto the now busy street. That preceding morning its workings were subtle, but by nightfall it was more happening than the New York stock exchange. I was out for the night’s prowl. It was 3:01AM, and the junk fiends were out for the night. The boulevard’s mean streets just weren’t the same without them.
 

All the night’s creatures were working their angles, rookies learning their craft while the big time pimps and pushers kept them on track. I would stare at them as they faded away into dark alley slums. From a distance, I could hear serial killers jumping roof-tops in the heat of persecution, never looking the cadaver in the eyes; infants crying in the absence of their bosoms; widows spitting madness at the live corpse in the coffin. Deeper into the brooding darkness, the blackout beats of noise and mutes.
 

Nightlife on the boulevard was happening to the hip new moon. The creatures simmered in its fullness, growing all the more vile and tainted. They were werewolf rebels. They staggered about dirty alleyways searching for a sucker to sell. That particular spot was known for bluntly cut stuff, but mean street junkies are a scandalous bunch. They didn’t care much, so long as they got the proper dose of what their frail carcasses required to keep tender. It was also an infamous spot to mingle with the local flimsies.
 

The whole poverty-stricken shantytown could hear those old businessmen plow away at sweet innocence behind empty dumpsters at the back entrance of the Noire de Rouge whorehouse.. .so I staggered on until I reached the front of the abandoned looking old tenement where he made his living. Dirty she-males and under-aged angels paraded their stuff at the building’s main entrance. They lifted their shirts exposing their naked bellies and blew soft kisses to every passer-by, hoping to bring in some earnings to please their beloved agents. They were picture-perfect portraits of shattered dreams of stardom in the big city. Their agents probably caught them at a naive and tender age, filling them with crass illusions about their chances at making it real big. And in a kind of sick way, they kept closely to their word. Prostitution was a popular tourist attraction, particularly among fat, white businessmen with nothing to offer the opposite sex, except maybe utter disappointment and a good laugh–
 

I strolled right passed these desperate young souls, with their cold, scared faces filling me with an unspeakable sadness. I could feel their bug eyes piercing my back, just hoping I would turn around with a nickel and my pants around my ankles.
 

–Your jissom just floats in and female guests are subject to conception.
 

These blithe little angels, with their pale faces no rosier than a sheet of ice, what wrongs had they done? What sinister deeds had they committed to wind up buried alive in a junkie graveyard, depraved and torn to the bone, stripped of all their natural grace and beauty?
 

–Reminds me of a handsome young man I use to know. He’d shoot jissom up career women. Never used his hands.
 

O sweet innocence, where hath thy leapt? Hath thy plundered into an unconquerable abyss, or art thou buried alive in skimpy rags and cheap women’s clothing? But what can I do. Misfortune is the golden rule. I can barely manage with my own arcane existence. I’m as out of place as they are.
 

–Perhaps it would be the same with anyone else once you got to know them.
–They could never match one of your swellings. You really know how to clean a girl out.
 

But what else can I offer these… mannequins, besides a withdrawn compassion from a safe enough distance? In my mind I thought “best of luck” and went up some rickety stairs. . .I was well on my way, out of that rat-infested dungeon of a slum, ready to fix and end my prowl. FADE OUT. FADE IN.
 

                          II
 

You see this procedure is quite simple. So I downloaded a story she wrote and began to read. I was intent on just knowing that she had showed it only to me–she showed it to me first–before anyone else had seen it. So I dug up some old papers: stories, cut-ups, some I’d written, some I had not, and an assortment of other things: newspaper clippings, personal adds, me and her horoscopes for July 10th. So I melted it all down to a stack of scraps and dropped it on a sticky mat. Her words lay against mine alone against the words of yesterday and copyright 1988. New images emerged–intimate–cannot explain you have to see it for yourself. I cut-in yesterday with a fold-in of today and her forecast dictated by the celestial bodies for a moment as above so was below. (In the act of creation I have assembled a secret place for you and I, a Third Mind–such an entity emerges only when more than two minds come together–only then will a Third Mind emerge.)–Everything seemed so perfect you have no idea how perfect it was. Anyway her image flicked in and out of my film track taking breaks in between takes so that her complexion would not fade into sun-blotched celluloid.
 

“It is a long trip. We are the only riders.” TTE, p.1. So that is how I have come to know her so well that the image of her lips the friction of her inner thighs her leg fragile as it bounces up and down the aroma of her breasts all perfume and soft and flesh and pink-nipples. . .And her knee as it slides across her other leg’s surface. . .All give life to inside burning fire. . .I sleep now I wake but one recurring image slips passed my consciousness and invaded my senses restless eye-lids–ah, this image. So the deal was that we’d meet at Grand Central Station at noon. I was there at dawn to check out the terrain–to scope out for heat is all–you never can know who is the third that walks beside you.
 

Every inch of my consciousness knows this image. I know it so well in fact that I can call on it whenever it needs me or whenever I need it. The image cannot exist without the mind. . .The word cannot exist without the image. . .And bullshit cannot exist without the word. . . Landscapes of barren terrain–jungles stretch as far as the eye can see encompassing all seen as humanly possible–It’s time to go now–I won’t sing anymore to the same old tune–Won’t you have me this evening?–Do your job and go–
 

So I was at the fishing hole the other day it was early dawn the birds were still chirping there was so much dew you have no idea how wet the windshields were anyway droves of aging junkies cool and grey in that old time junkie fashion they were all so graceful and serene as they floated across dusty pavement solidities with diarrhea rushing out their wrinkled ass–
 

Anyway I still had five bones left from my student financial aid (I took all courses related to languages, anthropology, film; don’t really count towards a college degree–Learned cuniform in five days, though). I bought a half sub and a bag of fritos. I sat at a lunchroom counter for hours–saw people from all walks traveling in and out of the city from every part of the world. There’s a movie theater full of faces from my youth. Everyone walking in and out different rooms. Light kept on at every turn. Most of the seats: empty. Makeshift faces trans-mutate to forms unknown. Blue dust in swirling winds stain musky brown faces.
 

                          III
 

In a crowd among ambiguous figures. Only sensed them peripherally. They could’ve had blank faces for all I knew. No eyes, no nose, no wrinkles, but only a smooth surface, a blank slate of flesh. Perhaps if I did happen to turn, my mind would superimpose some figure, some shapes on the faces. I felt, or rather, I mistook visual thoughts for the feeling of actually walking on pavement. I see my body move. Never do I see my legs to confirm this fact. I feel no movements, but I’m certainly moving, for the images change. It seems like a lot of the same for a while, all very generic. It must have taken place in less than a second.
 

I look back across what seemed like a flee market set up in some barren parking lot. See the image of a man. I don’t know why he stands out among the rest of the faceless drones. He might’ve been the only one with a face. Sky overcast. I began to walk forward, although I could have zig-zagged and spinned in circles, yet still arrive at my destination. Look back and he is still there. I seem to be walking in place. I move but he remains the same distance as when I first noticed him. He doesn’t seem to be walking. I run, turn, he’s still there. Now i’m running across these gunks of faceless flesh drones. I reach the end of the parking lot. There’s a thirty foot drop to a street built in what seemed like an urban canyon.
 

The parking lot was built on the flat peak of a hill. I found it odd that there were hills in a city like this. I must have warped to another city. The man was a few feet away when I stopped. I leaped over the long concrete stairway down to the street, suspended in mid-air for a pair of seconds, gliding to the glossy wet pavement. The people, the hill, the man: all disappeared behind me. Although, I didn’t exactly look back; I just knew. Now it’s only me and a street, facing old East LA houses built on hills with long stairways leading up to cement porches.
 

To my left, a pick-up truck swerves into my field of vision. A pack of hooded gunman, packing mach-10 submachine guns, faces sheathed by black and red bandanas, blast and crackle in the darkness. Sparkling lights shoot out from their guns. They’re screaming and whaling along the empty street. I couldn’t feel it, but I was definately hit. Then I saw one man with a steel pipe pull his arm back and swing. He hits a copper pipe of a set of stairs dangling from the edge of a hill. The street explodes in a big flash of light within seconds. I got into the back room, actually, a den, of the apartment complex in which I grew up. I watched free cable.
 

I looked for the channels that got good reception among the hundreds that sprinkled white noise and rainbow cut-ups of pornographic images. Flipping through mostly pornos and weird, 1920s mobster dramas. Cinemax. Fade to black. Feeling of extreme paranoia; profound sense of conspiracy. I sit up and open my eyes, but the feeling’s still there. Face slipped clean off head into incantory space. All foam and blue, all warts and bubble and molten ooze. Poured into cracked freeways. Ditches ten feet wide. Faces of six billion blend into one then into the earth. Form a new layer beneath crust. All their faces are one, billions of eyes noses lips trillions of nose hairs lashes almost exponential.
 

Faces sunken penetrate earthly sores. Gleaming midnight hour. Eyes are eyes two gems of ours. Smoke from toasting flies all burnt, and flowers. Thorny roses pushed down throat. All warm inside, my stomach frosted, intestines chilled. Each finger has it’s own little hand. Go in for a manicure and the korean girl at the register says “We’re gonna have to charge you extra!” Each little hand pulled out little revolvers, except for the two thumbs: they were packing sawed-off shotguns. Left Pinkie had some trouble holding his gun. He had arthritis. Middle Finger was jittery because of some caffeine binge. Looked mighty trigger happy. Swet from palm burnt a hole through the cell phone. Lefty Index and on of the Pinkies shared stories of their Oddysseys together after dark. One is a herpes infected invalid–
 

Note on technique #1: in order to create natural dialogue, a writer must first set down a first remark by a character. The writer must then anticipate–in his mind–what the next character’s response is. The dialogue, in a sense, writes itself; for there are only so many responses a character could make. First phrase: “Oh, hello my dear,” she said. “How nice of you to have made it.”–Now I ask, what is the next phrase? There are only so many ways to be polite–Second phrase: “Well thank you for having me”–You may carry this further until you get the desired result.(You are viewing the published version of this document.)
                  
                           IV
 

Finger me twice and suck my daisies. . .This might be my last routine. . .Doors close at a quarter to five. . .All the parks are closed. . . Fuck junkies gold lit blue smell like vaporous fumes of ozone solids. . .Burnt washed-down turpentine I still don’t got it. . .Rub me out and call me the rube. This’ll be the last show. . .Heaps of disjointed metal limbs spread across steely subterranean catacombs—-Frolicking monkey eye-halves spark-up like twilight’s past life—Blue death-foam covers automatic fuck-room solids soldered to rusted iron shrapnel spines of disembodied youths—Gate at far end of pitch hall purple glitter pubic hairs lined all around and glistening with pale mucus spurt—Shrink-wrap wallpaper—
 

Two life-size cocks and a seven-foot hen with marble eye lids plastered over—Asteroid riot gear—Step through—Cock head lips spread feet wide consuming half Paco’s left leg—Dragged—Pulled across slimy halls and shadow caverns filled with grey toothpaste pasty thick wet dripping along red hot rails—Paco’s face per-mutated to brown scab flesh—Hen ripped with a claw slip down the middle—Pulled’em open like the Sunday Times—Exposed dermis death flesh gangrene drips dry on walls as the move forward—Eyes gone nose gone lips tongue ears gone—All gone—Master cock clucks to lesser cock “Phase one complete” in infrasonic transmission—Message superimposed on Hen by alpha wave stimulator—
 

Corner crack on flaking ceiling flesh—Reached cavernous door of pubescent anal membrane pink-blue—Flesh lock indicator superimposes, “Input alien cock.”—Hen slams Paco on sheets of bones cadavers tied-down African women fetuses ketchup mustard—Paco’s ass rubs metallic cool below sheet surface—Reach for slim brown shaft key—Scratches jerks at unstrung cock with cold blue chicken claws—Master cock began incestuous clucks penetrating Paco’s abdomen stimulating nerve centers concentrated erection—Hen punctures meaty rectum with horny black metal claws blood blush cock stiffened—
 

Inserted whirling vortex automated orgasm grimy flesh wall—Suctioned him high-pressure air—Paco’s body stuck to wall unattended—Suckled high-pressure at his spiffy until ejaculation filled meter of entry—Filled to brim opening the flesh door—Machete rusty fixed to flesh wall came down on door splitting it it propped open—Blush with heavy eyes to the mud–Cocks and Hen dematerialized into alpha wave extraction milk flesh–
 

                          V
 

Silently, slowly; revulsion.
 

–Where did you get this?, she asked.
–Nick’s. Signed by Dusty.
 

Fell upon her face.
 

–Call it quid pro quo.
 

She had, of course, already.
 

Flashed to it once again.
 

We’d talked about it. Something about a person crying. Only then does the agony surface.
 

–Let the silent tears fall; return, he said.
–I’ll let myself breeze over, she said.
 

He was not good. But it was wonderful to watch. . .
 

No hello. No “Come right in.”
 

Creeping onto her face.
 

Sheath had been replaced by her eyes. The brows merged, signaling large amounts of money.
 

–Intimate friends?, she asked.
–Acquaintances.
 

 

[go# To$ top^ Of& page*]
 

–Junk on the back of some lorry, he said.
–What worries me, she said, is that for such a lovely set, that’s well above our usual commission.
 

He wished the words back
 

–No skin off my nose.
 

He looked coldly.
 

–If only I could have taken you aback, she said.
–If only I could have talked, he said.
 

Washed-up. Done. As beauty routines went, everything was hunky-dory.
 

–When I didn’t use sunblock, couldn’t half-stretch the old ear-lobes.
–Knew it, he said.
–You’ve got better eyes than I, she said.
–It was hardly out of my hands, he said.
 

Pretty close. But a ring repaired.
 

–Cleaned and repaired?
–Why not?, she asked.
–He’s cleaned it very well.
–Yes, she said, yes.
 

[go# To$ top^ Of& page*]
 

At the very first pickup. Sleepy people waiting on the soft green foothills looking just ahead.
 

–You may proceed to the edge. I will call you by number.
 

About twenty minutes later.
 

When she awoke at their side, slightly disheveled faces burn through the haze, waiting for some food, who had been picked up from one group or another, gleaning, waiting for some morsel. The drift profitably their way.
 

–And where’s the lady with the workbench?, she asked.
–Who knows, they said.
 

She smiled.
 

–And the man from the cafe?
–Dead. Over the engines, day three.
 

Goats poking in the barren boulders.
 

–Good night, she said.
 

She closed her eyes.
 

[# $ ^ & *]
[STEAL.EVERYTHING.IN.SIGHT]
[Quickly, with pleasure, and loud.]
 

I asked her what she was doing here.
“Fate”, she replied without blinking.
 

She removed her top.
 

Everything was working out exactly as it was meant to.
 

I went to work on her bra.
 

Quoted a price and she undid me.
 

I asked where she stood on the swallowing issue.
She told me that she lives in the moment not yet experienced.
 

Then i found myself looking at a map only to discover that i was inside her.
 

(more to cum)….
 

                          VI
 

Conveyor belt of rusty nails moved beneath him toward a neon pink platform at the center of a vacuous murky cavern–Cut-to of strobe lights he saw lined against inside flesh walls hanging spines foot long taps–towering black steel citrus trees with sprouting genital warts branches of sewn together penis flesh–Barbed-wire lined blue-pink–He lay bare on scratched static alabaster flesh withdrawals–Vortex of cool slate colosseum–Thousands of men women children hallucinating chickens in piled up coops dogs screeching cats standing upright howling, “Ow, ow, on with the shrow!!”–”Weeejj, thatzzz, rightzzz!”–”Neuter that mutt!”–Lights shook off leaving only spotlights fixed on his broken mass–
 

Lackluster stench of brunet with blond and waning faint grime and anal mucus highlights—Neon image of tall green platform shoes bound to skimpy black dress split-end towering nostrils assumed it made from morbid lips—Drew nearer now cracked and moving black tongue flesh in packed up ass exposing slimy cavern of rusty naked—Back and ass lay strapped down atop icy steel barstools bright stage lights as government and anyone might be a Hamish exclusive emergency evict—-
 

Cut at its center a three-day showdown pledging to rebuild it late afternoon—About 500 evolutionaries perform in steely hisses resounding slick space less vacuum all were still there when riot police slithered in and out drop-kicked doors shattered shatter proof glass and perforated abdomens—Slithered in and out between wearing what felt like hospital garbs—Table with bare if any muddy mass scientists said are dead-end arrangements with settlement work for police spokesmen people trying to ruin civilian marriages—Resettle the spot and dismantle in CLEARWATER, FLA.—-
 

Perform oral sex and the summer thing 4,500 species of mammals on woman’s sex-change—Confrontation takes no one—Sex-change place—Never met—Know it’s part of operation tactics—Earth and no women who can help with Israeli pullout—And fossil of extinct vain might as well been with other anal probe—Does not butut—He thought trans-men tents all free—But the sounds of over backyard fuck show otherwise for a gaze is a soft noise and interval fuck-fest but others embrace from a far was making wet dream resisted—And not the blunt it was all irksome—Them’s taste was arrived until Monday—They largely judge me had he only been evolutionary—Wednesday—With one that moved her breasts from smacked presence—-
 

Didn’t notice anyone must look in the hole—Earth—65 million in there he felt their cold all still and the ruins of a presence his field dry with goose-bumps—Jewish settlements of vision demanded all over just years ago wiped out more but more was waiting for a lick the dinosaurs ending not given by his of warmth with her back to him imagined—Or at least they lifted his brow to devise a seem to sway from time to time family free band—How could they move to sway for alternating his gaze from his alimony if they had no legs—So that it wouldn’t oblige to move them from come off as odd status—Any case he fleshed one place to another—-
 

Him not to look out the image in his butt—In this—Only this—For a few minds with what uncertain looking morsels he had the off made believe all was permitted—and so—He peered at her kinds of obscenities he awoke in a perfect composure vile foul filthy over him he had her without any other inane deeds in one—Was let in from some thought in place lustrous flash and bad smell like rather absent-minded flushed cock—Little of both knew somewhere in didn’t know but it pulsated as he gave him the biggest—The darkness spurted his shame in mind that hard-on felt himself they were more among them but who blushed to crimson ass—Permeating tired gape like hundreds of Israeli vibrations followed—-
 

Chinese cotton—Her police hiss and vibrations legs lengthy and mammalian in asteroid riot gear smooth and slick and across the invisible cavern where I am he—Dragged squatters they had this glimmer in their eyes had this glimmer to them as of fades and mutes and he recalled a thought as his fate invaded his senses—Years about drew nearer—2,500 protesters in Peninsula causing mass extinction marched to Hamish on what they thought was woman in a black dress somewhere in WASHINGTION—-
 

The pitch her smooth eyes and he looked to oppressed eyes a white flesh her dead in the eyes clinging echo blackened leaving and felt the bounce from one phosphorescent sharpness of her wall to the other crimson lips exposed dead and cold and making out the scratched and picked withered soul—But sounds was a nerve through some inexplicable racking task his now waving depraved eyes were open but force kept him there he felt of the world attempts to see were like a man of shame unseen around him he in his own living like an animal like sequestered as the flesh he was there crowd that now appeared to both his side turned mute and lights dimmed to pixilated rainbow—-
 

Configured her inner thigh to reflections in the outline in the pitch his ass to the tip obscurity some light giving form to what of his spine she the cloak of the little he knew or turned he felt her thin garb he felt wide awake felt the heat of her the cool drip along cut of her rusty eyes undressing more than any gaze the dizziness but in every article every in every bit of fear and she pierced for peace between metallic shapeless dithering wits she’s at his ass giving the tender lips a pungent funk—-
 

His this eerie neared now parted lace he thought girl sensation either of now closed parted in the black dress disgust again now closed and paved the way excitement or a neared slow then a vicious beast in his mind but in swooped distance captivity with no truth it was she unknown the shine of legs no life no will revealed by her lips now shone no way to lead into shadows working lips swayed nearer own jailed jaw now against his sight and thigh and pulsating orb in source unrevealed he would slide clear her vortex of orgasm. . .Google Docs & Spreadsheets — Web word processing and spreadsheets. Edit this page (you have permission) “If the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.” -WSB–
 

                          VII
 

. . .and when her lips pat against my face and my chest. . .oh, it takes me to another world, oh, yes it does. . .but when i put my arms around her, oh, but she blushes, yes she does. . .but something in her eyes tell me that all is not well. . .we’ve been around the block twice, but now our adventures are over. . .well, then, i guess it was all fun while it lasted. . .but no nothing ever lasts. . .i’m talking to myself again. . .but from what crevice does it all ebb? wherefore did the light first peak out from her heavenly brow. . .it’s late outside and the chairs are empty. . .oh no i haven’t been my self lately no i haven’t. . .but since when are you the one asking the questions. . . is it the image of your voice or is it the sound of your look or perhaps it is the moving of your breathing the ebb of your hips the sadness in your eyes. . .but yes all is well in thine own heart. . .i say girl be you real and truly for this moment could be your last. . .play it all back. . .pay it all pay it all play it all back. . .back. . .from whence it all began. . .to whereth it goes asunder as the night sky. . .in retreat like the night sky, asunder. . .no please to go don’t leave here alone with my beating heart. . .alone. . .my bleeding heart. . .it’s all gone i promise. . .don’t wait up i’ll be gone for a while. . .i’ll come back in a while. . .stay just for a while. . .oh no sir i don’t have my id with me. . .all the parks are closed. . .everyone’s asleep but the moon’s still shining. . .and when her lips pat against my chest and my face and the hairs on my arm blush across her texture with like an artist’s stroke. . .like brush against canvas in the act of divine creation. . .and yes i will yes.
 

Gangs of ogres with fangs made from rusty iron machetes chomp on brass instruments as the old men faded into static flashing electrodes. My head is five inches long, give or take. I don’t think i’ll be alone forever. The world’s too big to leave sitting around. Take it for a spin. You know you want to. So this is how the cookies crumble. I’m too tired for all that horse-raddish. It’s time for my cup of tea! Oh, don’t be bashful, good sir, for good fortune rests only in Providece. Do ‘it’. Transistor radios flickering on and off in sound of space gaps dissolving to flesh film–Infrasonic youth sweep over uncanny streets and expanding alley ways–Receiving instruction from Nova Express–Roger that–Over–Out–
 

Florescent fields of metallic ground penises–Kidneys imploded from pressure of reality disturbances–There they are the wild boys cutting all transmission–Boys with blue eyes and hip jeans and shoes storm the studio burning image tracks exploding into millions of images millions upon millions of images across celestial catacombs and glowing orbs of pink and neon celluloid microfilm–Photo falling–phalling foto photo falling–track burning photo burning image track bursting into thin air in a series of atomic flashes and sonic booms–Into thin air–CUT. WORD. LINES. SWITCH. IMAGE. TRACK.–Melt a piece down, and the whole studio goes up in shit–Sound flashes and 1980’s grade-B shit horror movies–J. goes up to the counter rang the bell didn’t think much of it just a routine pass at a LA whorehouse that’s the place to be but the image track kept fading receding as he backed into his cubicle–He had a nice phace so the lady at the desk let him through–FADE TO BLACK.

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